Starmer must try to solve the insoluble

THE Government's problems are many and various. From our stuttering economy to our overcrowded prisons there are any number of issues that will be giving rise to deep concern inside 10 Downing Street and beyond. But there is just one issue that outflanks all others in the damage that it is doing to Labour - the migrant crisis.

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Last week’s High Court ruling, that turning an Essex hotel into a holding centre for migrants breaches planning rules, brings a new focus to the problem. The Government's appeal against that decision ensures the story will run. But even before those developments inward migration — on small boats and more conventionally - was already the issue that dominated voters' concerns and upset and angered people the most.

The migration issue is full of nuance and subtlety. But the overriding narrative, that the migrants are a drain on the economy, and a potential crime risk, is now baked into large parts of the national mood. With almost one million migrants setting up home in Britain in 2023 - four times the figure in 2019 - it is hardly surprising that across the country anger is growing.

But you could argue that anger is being fuelled from the very top. Even the Prime Minister says that such a massive jump in migrant numbers has done “incalculable damage to our country.”

In the introduction to the Government’s White Paper on restoring control to the immigration system he writes: “Public services and housing access have been placed under too much pressure. Our economy has been distorted by perverse incentives to import workers rather than invest in our own skills.”