Why won't the Home Office set a small boats deadline?

Yvette Cooper has described the number of people arriving in the UK on small boats as too high”. But she has also steadfastly refused to set a deadline for when voters might see the figures fall.

- KATE DEVLIN

Why?

Precedence. Or, perhaps, fear. Fear, that is, of what happened to her predecessor. Rishi Sunak, when he was prime minister,staked his reputation on being able to cut the number of small boat crossings into Britain. In fact, he even said that he would stop the boats. It was one of his five key pledges to the public he said they could judge him upon in a general election. And they did. Mr Sunak’s administration lost in July in a landslide defeat to Labour.