Voters may see Tory asylum plans as sign of determination – or disarray

Migrant camps on distant islands; decommissioned ferries kitted out to process asylum seekers; floating booms in the Channel. The government’s “blue skies” plans for tackling an influx of people arriving in small boats via continental Europe have appalled human rights campaigners and sparked a briefing war.

One overexcited “Whitehall source” told the Politico Playbook newsletter, which is well read by Westminster insiders, that the leaks had come from a “rotten core of civil servants” who were “the enemy within and will be rooted out”.

The Home Office permanent secretary, Matthew Rycroft, told MPs on Thursday that a leak inquiry would be launched to find the source of the stories, which appeared in the Guardian and FT.

But it would be a mistake to think the government is not serious about these plans or has any regrets that they have made their way into the open.

The documents leaked to the Guardian suggest that serious consideration was being given to the proposal for overseas processing centres as recently as mid-September.

Civil servants’ assessment of the plans’ feasibility in the papers drip with carefully worded scepticism. But Boris Johnson’s official spokesman was happy to confirm on the record that the government was indeed looking at ways of toughening up the system.

That includes examining the approach of other countries such as Australia, which has used a highly controversial offshore processing centre on the south Pacific island of Nauru. Foreign Office sources said Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, was examining the idea with “vigour”, even if his officials appeared to be wary.

It’s not surprising that Downing Street is casting around for ideas. Notwithstanding what Johnson’s friends insist is his instinctive liberalism, the prime minister’s team of Vote Leave veterans believe fears of unchecked migration were crucial in helping them to win the 2016 referendum.

Having promised voters that it would “take back control of our borders” as a benefit of Brexit, and with Nigel Farage paying frequent visits to Dover to stoke up tensions, the government wants to be seen to be getting a grip.

Recently, the home secretary, Priti Patel, appeared in a slick Home Office video showing her meeting Border Force officials in Dover, and she appointed a “clandestine Channel threat commander” whose title jars with the footage of desperate families clinging to unseaworthy dinghies.

More than that, though, this is the kind of public spat that Dominic Cummings and his Vote Leave crew love. They believe it plays well for them with voters, particularly in former Labour seats in the Midlands and north of England – the so-called red wall.

Privately, some government advisers have been responding with glee to the spate of news stories. Amid criticism of the prime minister’s botched handling of the pandemic, they believe drawing a clear dividing line with the metropolitan liberal establishment – including official Whitehall – will help demonstrate how determined they are.

And having failed to engage Keir Starmer’s Labour party in a culture war over Winston Churchill’s statue, the new BBC director general or Last Night of the Proms, they have no qualms in opening up a new front on the vexed subject of immigration.

The shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, was quick to condemn the asylum plans, describing the Tories as “lurching from one inhumane and impractical idea to another”.

Johnson’s team hope that what the public will hear is “We really want to halt illegal immigration, Labour doesn’t” – just as last year’s noisy row over proroguing parliament left a lingering sense in voters’ minds that the prime minister was prepared to overcome any obstacles to “get Brexit done”.

The fact that a tactic has worked once does not mean it will work again, however: context is everything. Thomas-Symonds’ use of the word “impractical” points to Labour’s determination to keep attacking Johnson’s government not just on moral and ideological grounds, but as not being very good at the job.

Against the backdrop of the fumbled handling of the pandemic, Labour will hope the impression created by these latest outlandish plans is not of dogged determination, but of disarray.