Starmer has done half the impossible on small boats

The British genius for seeing the cloud attached to every silver lining was on display this week.

- JOHN RENTOUL

Only 50 a week? That's more like 17 in, one out, that is. We've been played by the French. What a load of rubbish. And so ever on. A fairer assessment is that Keir Starmer has made a breakthrough, the first step towards solving an impossible problem. He has secured the agreement with Emmanuel Macron that Rishi Sunak tried for and failed. For the first time, the French government has agreed to take some small-boat migrants back.

I did not think that this was possible. I can see that it might objectively be in France’s interest to close the Channel route. It might mean that fewer migrants come to France in the hope of then making it to the UK, and it would mean clearing the tent city around Calais and squatter camps across northern France. But the benefit would be marginal, while politically it seemed unthinkable that Macron would want to give the British special treatment.

Yet he has.