Surprise speeches reveal political battles to come on migration – and Labour’s plan will take time | Politics News

In the last 24 hours journalists have scrambled to surprise speeches by the prime minister, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage. The Reform UK leader says he has had “enough of being lied to”.

That tells us just how much politics there is around today’s migration statistics.

Sir Keir Starmer wants to frame the headline net migration figure (728,000 in the year to June) in the context of record numbers under the Conservatives. The figure for the year ending June 2023 has just been revised up to 906,000.

We can also reveal a “landmark” immigration and border security deal has just been announced with Iraq. The timing seems coincidental.

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Small boat crossings are a tiny fraction of the overall net migration figure but around 20,000 people have crossed the channel in small boats since Sir Keir became prime minister and today’s Home Office numbers, released alongside the overall ONS net migration figures, are not comfortable for the government.

The number of asylum seekers in hotels and temporary accommodation has risen by just under 10,000 in three months to September, despite Labour pledging to end the use of hotels, and spending on the asylum system in the UK in 2023/24 was £5.38bn – 12 times what it was a decade ago.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has spent the week in Baghdad and Erbil, meeting with Iraqi leaders and the Kurdish regional government, agreeing a “Declaration of Intent on Serious Organised Crime”.

The home secretary says it is a “landmark” moment, that will tackle the small boat crossings “at source” and help their pledge to “smash the gangs”.

But is it enough to shift the dial? I’m not sure.

I asked Yvette Cooper about returns as Iraq is one of the top ten countries people travelling in small boats come from (3,002 in the year to June). She said the deal was a “first step” on returns.

The home secretary told me the new agreement will “increase cooperation on returns” but added that there is “further work we want to do in this area”.

It is not an insignificant agreement, but the government’s long-term plan on irregular migration will involve more international deals and take time to be born out in the figures.

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The reason the 2022 deal with Albania was so successful was because of the number of Albanian arrivals that were then able to be quickly returned.

The prime minister will try to shift as much blame onto the Conservatives as possible.

Kemi Badenoch, herself, has admitted her party got it “wrong” on immigration.

Legal and irregular migration present very different challenges, and complexities that will be lost in today’s headline figures.

But the numbers have had an impact and party leaders of all stripes are grappling to set out their version of what has gone wrong with migration.