Cooper has given up trying to stop the migrant boats

The only way to stop the small boats coming across the Channel would be for Emmanuel Macron to allow the British to return their occupants to France.

- JOHN RENTOUL

That is not something that the French president is willing to do, because he would appear to be giving in to Britain.

Nothing else will work. Some of the more drastic policy options might have a limited deterrent effect. The Rwanda scheme might have put a few migrants off attempting the crossing, and a few who were already in the UK did go to Dublin because they didn’t want to risk being deported to Kigali.

But the number that could have been sent to Rwanda, a few hundred out of the tens of thousands of small-boat arrivals, would never have deterred the majority of those intending to make the crossing. These are people who are prepared to take the risk of drowning to get to the UK – the small chance that they might end up in Rwanda instead would not have been enough to persuade them to give up.

Anything less than that, therefore, will have less effect. Confiscating the mobile phones of new arrivals, for example, even if it is called a “new counterterror-style power”, is unlikely to make any difference whatsoever.