If you want to stop illegal immigration, this is what you have to do

If ministers really want to deport illegal immigrants and foreign criminals, they would remove all barriers to deportation. That is not what they are doing.

Every now and then, a minister sounds like they might just get it. Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said he worried mass immigration would turn the country into an “island of strangers”. But his party went berserk, and the PM blamed his speechwriters, saying he had not read his own keynote speech until he stood up to make it.

This week the new Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has noticed illegal immigrants are making “vexatious, last-minute” legal claims to thwart deportation. A concerned citizen might have taken this intervention to mean curbs on the laws that allow these appeals were forthcoming. But hard words will be followed by limp action.