The Home Office has confirmed illegal migration is no more. Done. Gone.
No more need to worry about illegal migration, as within only a few weeks the new Labour Home Office team have got to work and decreed its abolition from the nation.
From now on, there is no such thing as illegal migration into Sir Keir Starmer’s Britain, there is only legal migration and “irregular” migration.
GB News readers will note my deliberate sarcasm.
A change of word as part of a rebranding exercise is not going to stop a single boat, smash a gang or bring order at the border.
There has also been no change to S24 of the Immigration Act 1971, which states: “A person who is not a British citizen shall be guilty of an offence……. if contrary to this Act he knowingly enters the United Kingdom in breach of a deportation order or without leave;”.
Those arriving in a small boat or hidden in a truck are visibly aware they are doing so without leave.
Whilst changing a word might seem harmless, it is worth considering what lies behind this rebranding and what is says about future approaches to illegal migration.
It is not simply someone at a keyboard in the Home Office deciding to use a different word in a tweet, the changed description will have been carefully considered as part of a handling strategy for the summer.
By changing the word to irregular, Labour can spend time arguing with Nigel Farage, the public and the Conservatives, that no one is “illegal”, rather their arrival was “irregular”.
Try to side-track every serious attempt at debate on stopping the boats into the cul-de-sac of what word to use in the description.
A row about a word means time spent on this not, for example, outlining how a border security command is in reality any different to the small boat’s operation command created under the last Government.
The word change also signals a nod towards the way many Labour MPs have for years consistently opposed attempts to crack down on illegal migration to this country.
Some have argued almost constantly for open borders or large-scale resettlement schemes.
Although often whilst not being quite so keen for their own local council to be offering the pro-rate number of settlement spaces their national demands would require.
Being “irregular”, rather than “illegal” allows an excuse when approving large numbers of asylum claims. Announcements of “speeding up” dealing with claims, will get some thinking this means lots of people will soon be on planes home.
The reality will be very different: Lots of people who arrived as illegal migrants getting a quick rubber-stamped approval.
Yet Labour Ministers will quickly state they were not “illegal”, just “irregular” in their arrival.
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The only thing which has been consistent about Labour’s approach to migration has been inconsistency.
In opposition, they could get away with one day calling for new visas for various recruitment problems, then the next day bemoaning that employers were not offering good enough packages to key workers for people to take those jobs up.
They could argue for a large number of new refugee visas, yet not then have to require Labour Councils to offer the number of settlement places this would entail.
Changing the word used won’t itself produce a busy summer in the channel.
But the change in attitude of viewing it as just irregular, not an offence or a crime, combined with scrapping the Rwanda Plan and rubber stamping lots of approvals, will mean a busy summer in the Channel ahead for the people traffickers.