In Yvette Cooper’s torrid year at the helm, the Home Office has lurched from one disaster to the next.
And today she is paying the price for a litany of dismal failures.
Chief among them is Labour’s derisory ‘smash the gangs’ pledge to tackle the small boats crisis which has proved hopeless.
The consequent surge in immigration is one of the key factors fuelling the rise of the Reform party which is changing the shape of Britain’s political landscape.
Ms Cooper had vowed the new Border Security Command would ‘pursue, disrupt, and arrest those responsible for the vile trade’ in people trafficking which has seen drownings and misery beset the English Channel.
But mostly what the public sees is photos of border control and coastguard vessels helpfully plucking migrants out of small boats in the middle of the Channel and giving them a free ‘taxi ride’ to Britain, no papers required.
The statistics speak for themselves. Since the election, the number of migrants to have reached Britain has passed 50,000, a record high, with the soaring figure a clear indication of the lack of a plan since Labour axed the Tories‘ Rwanda deportation scheme on their first day in power.
Now huge numbers of migrants are arriving and being sent to live in four-star hotels or council flats, courtesy of taxpayers, while local people are languishing on housing waiting lists. Even the Home Office admits there is a strain on health and education services.
Yvette Cooper: axed as Home Secretary after a year beset by failures
Extraordinary pictures from Gravelines beach in northern France show dozens of migrants rushing into the sea towards a dinghy
Crossings have been particularly high in the warm weather
Amid rising public concern, Labour has suffered a second summer of unrest, with demonstrations and arrests stretching police forces all over the country.
The Home Office has repeatedly pledged to cut down on the use of hotels for migrants, yet countless hotels are still ‘closed’ to the public and full with migrants instead.
The recent chaos at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, is seen as a consequence of the Government’s failures to get a grip on the issue.
From shoplifting to grooming gangs to curbs on free speech, it would be easier to choose the worst disaster than to pick out any particular successes notched up by Ms Cooper’s department.
She arrived at the Home Office with a reputation for being a proper expert in her brief, having studied every nook and cranny of the department as chair of the Home Affairs Committee and as Shadow Home Secretary.
But the challenges she faced were dizzying, with one long-serving minister remarking to the BBC that ‘whichever cupboard you open, you know all sorts of terrible things that have been crammed in there for years will fall out’.
Protests outside the Bell Hotel in Essex
Police charged dozens of total in connection with various protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex
Migrants running down the sand dunes onto the beach at Gravelines in northern France
The migrants waited in a group on the beach – apparently under instruction from smugglers
The trouble for Ms Cooper, to continue this metaphor, may be that she seems to have ripped open all the cupboard doors at the same time.
Her failure to set up a grooming gangs inquiry – or, as her critics would say, take the issue seriously at all – was one of the avoidable own goals.
Meanwhile the shoplifting epidemic has grown worse than ever, with recent shock figures showing almost 800 crimes a day are going unsolved.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures published last month showed that shoplifting hit a record high of 530,643 offences reported to police in the year to March, a 20 per cent increase on the last year’s total of 444,022.
Meanwhile the Government’s Online Safety Act, though rightly aiming to protect children from the scourge of pornography, may be curtailing freedom of speech on the internet, according to experts.
One of the primary responsibilities of a Home Secretary – who presides over the police and MI5 – is the safety of the nation. Yet even Ms Cooper’s bid to act tough fell flat. In early July she determined that Palestine Action is a terrorist group, after idiotic activists broke into RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and sprayed red paint into the engines of two refuelling aircraft.
Amid a national debate over whether this wanton criminal act amounted to genuine terrorism, Palestine Action exploited the publicity and attracted support from other bloody-minded anti-social groups such as Just Stop Oil. And the newspapers were filled with photos of unlikely-looking ‘terrorist’ activists on Palestine Action marches including two 89-year-old ladies being taken away in police vans.
Ultimately it is immigration that will serve as the millstone around Ms Cooper’s neck. Concern over immigration has surged to become the public’s most pressing issue, according to polling.
Nearly half the public view immigration as one of the biggest problems in the country – the highest proportion since just before the historic Brexit vote – a recent survey by Ipsos found.
It was mentioned by 49 per cent of people asked to list the ‘most pressing issues facing Britain today’, up 15 percentage points on the previous month.
Police officers arresting an 89-year-old protester at a ‘Lift The Ban’ demonstration in support of the proscribed group Palestine Action
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It is not even clear how many illegal migrants are in the UK. The Home Office fails to collect ‘basic information’ on foreign workers including whether they carry on working illegally in the UK at the end of their visas, MPs from the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warned recently. They found the department ‘does not know’ how many foreign visa holders leave the country when they are supposed to.
On Ms Cooper’s watch, the right to free speech has become a toxic issue.
Humiliatingly for a country that has long cherished a free Press, Britain has found itself being berated by US vice president JD Vance for cracking down on free speech. It follows farcical episodes in which police are taking time off hunting burglars to knock on the doors of people who have been accused of making hateful remarks on social media.
The head of the Metropolitan Police recently blamed politicians for putting his officers in an ‘impossible position’ over online speech.
He spoke out after the arrest of Father Ted creator Graham Linehan for social media comments.
Graham Linehan arrives at Westminster Magistrates’ Court for a trial where he was accused of harassing a trans woman
Linehan wore a placard outside the court doors which read ‘Keep men out of women’s sports’
Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley defended the five armed officers who arrested Mr Linehan at Heathrow on Monday on suspicion of inciting violence over three messages he posted on X in April.
The tweets included one in which he joked that women should punch transgender women ‘in the balls’ if they use female-only spaces.
Sir Mark said ‘a threat to punch someone from a protected group could be an offence’ but admitted: ‘I understand the concern caused by such incidents given differing perspectives on the balance between free speech and the risks of inciting violence in the real world.’
He added: ‘When it comes to lesser cases, where there is ambiguity in terms of intent and harm, policing has been left between a rock and a hard place by successive governments who have given officers no choice but to record such incidents as crimes when they’re reported. Then they are obliged to follow all lines of inquiry and take action as appropriate.’
