The first migrants have arrived on board the Bibby Stockholm barge moored in Portland Port in Dorset this week.
Although only a small number of migrants are expected to be housed on the barge at first, Home Office minister Sarah Dines indicated it could increase rapidly to its capacity of around 500 men.
Much has been said of humanitarian implications of housing migrants on barges, with the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) saying it is a “deathtrap” and others comparing it to modern slave ships.
The Conservative’s deputy chairman Lee Anderson also stoked tensions by telling those who do not wish to be accommodated there to “f**k off back to France”, a sentiment that has been backed up by the justice secretary, Alex Chalk.
But perhaps more damaging to the Tories during Rishi Sunak’s ‘small boat week’ is an admission from Anderson that the party’s plans to tackle illegal immigration effectively have failed.
“We have failed on this, there’s no doubt about it”, he said.
“We said we’re going to fix it, it is a failure. But we have got policies in place – I know it’s a bit hard for the British public at the moment to understand what we’re trying to do with the Rwanda flights, and the change in legislation, the Illegal Migration Bill.
“It seems very slow and cumbersome – we’re up against it, we’ve got the lefty lawyers, the human rights campaigners, we’ve got the charities, everything’s against us.
“I’m not making excuses, but it’s slowing us down. If we had the whole of parliament behind us I’m sure this would have got through by now.”
It is a sentiment echoed by the house journal of the Conservative Party, otherwise known as The Telegraph, which described the Bibby Stockholm as a “symbol of Britain’s failed migration policy”.
With the prime minister struggling to hit the mark on any of his five pledges so far, this isn’t something he will want to be widely shared.
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