This is an audio transcript of the Payne’s Politics podcast episode: ‘Rishi Sunak tackles the small-boat crossings’

George Parker
It was a week that started with high political tensions around the small-boats issue and ended with a note of harmony, even an entente cordiale. But the political week didn’t start off that way.

Keir Starmer
Claims unprocessed, the taxpayer paying for hotel rooms, criminal gangs running all the way laughing to the bank and an asylum system utterly broken on his watch. This is their fifth prime minister, their sixth immigration plan, their seventh home secretary. And after all this time, all they offer is the same old gimmicks and empty promises.

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George Parker
Welcome to Payne’s Politics, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times with me, George Parker, in the hot seat vacated by Seb Payne. And a new name is on its way, and a new format, too, I promise. But in the meantime, you’re stuck with me. In this week’s episode, we’ll be looking at Rishi Sunak’s attempts to solve the small-boats issue with the new illegal migration bill. I’m delighted to be joined by political correspondent Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe and columnist Miranda Green to discuss it. And then we’ll be talking about the UK-France summit in Paris, the first such meeting in five years, and a rare outbreak of bonhomie between the two sides. Lord Peter Ricketts, Britain’s former ambassador to Paris, and Leila Abboud, the FT’s Paris correspondent, will take us through the highs and lows of that relationship.

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So, sorting out the small-boats issue was uppermost in Rishi Sunak’s mind this week, and so was the prospect of opening up a culture war with Keir Starmer, Gary Lineker, lawyers — well, anyone really — who opposed his plan.

Rishi Sunak
Stopping the boats, Mr Speaker? Stopping the boats is not just my priority, it is the people’s priority. But his position on this is clear. He wanted to, in his words, scrap the Rwanda deal. He voted against measures to deport foreign criminals, Mr Speaker. He’s just another lefty lawyer standing in our way.

George Parker
It was a week of some pretty big claims. For example, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, claiming that billions of people might try to reach Britain. Or Gary Lineker saying that the government’s language around the new policy reminds him of 1930s Germany. So let’s calm things down a bit and look at what we’ve learned this week. So Jasmine, what exactly has been proposed?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
So this is the illegal migration bill that was put forward to MPs in the House of Commons on Tuesday. Now the idea behind it is that it means that any individual whom the government deems to have entered the UK illegally — for example, those who have travelled on small boats across the channel — they are no longer eligible to claim asylum. It also puts a legal duty on the home secretary to return any individual who has come to the UK via that route, return them to their country of origin or a third, quote, safe country. Now that’s where we would see perhaps Rwanda coming into play. There are also lots of other countries being discussed, and it was quite an interesting piece of legislation because it was widely trailed in the weekend papers and there was lots of questioning over how this would differ to previous bits of legislation. But the main argument seems to be that actually this piece of legislation pushes the boundaries of what is legal effectively, and there’s this huge question over whether it actually adheres to our international obligations as well.

George Parker
Miranda, I was going to ask you about that, because unusually Suella Braverman, the home secretary, wrote to Tory MPs and said there was more than a 50 per cent chance that this law could breach our obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights. That’s quite an interesting way for a government to behave, isn’t it?

Miranda Green
Yes, which makes you think they must see some sort of political advantage in the idea of having a confrontation about it. You mentioned Suella Braverman’s remarks, but also Rishi Sunak said he was up for the fight if it got as far as the court. So, presumably, they think that this will help shore up their right flank and even see off attacks from a kind of Faragist anti-immigration wing of voters.

George Parker
Do you think this is gonna work as a policy?

Miranda Green
Well, I think there’s two aspects to it. There’s one, does it have public support? And two, will actually be effective? Is it workable? The Labour party seems to have gone in on a tack on whether it’s workable or not. I think on public opinion, it’s really interesting because in fact, although we have record-high numbers of immigrants coming to the UK at the moment, there’s also — in historic terms, there’s actually very high support for certain sorts of immigration to the UK. It seems as if the public care much more about how people come here and who’s coming than about the numbers. For example, people are in favour of international students, they’re in favour of employing people from outside the UK. What the public don’t seem to like is unmanaged illegal immigration, which is why the Tory party, I think, thinks a small-boats hardline policy will go over well. But of course if the public can’t see that it’s been effective, then it won’t convince voters. And actually there’s an enormous amount of doubt, even amongst the public being polled at the moment, as to whether it will be effective in stopping the boats.

George Parker
Yeah, interesting. We ran a story this week, didn’t we, saying that whilst on one hand you have Rishi Sunak announcing this crackdown on illegal migration as he sees it. On the other hand, behind the scenes, government is talking about relaxing some of the rules on bringing foreign workers into the country in the first case in terms of construction workers, but possibly further down the line, who knows, maybe retail hospitality as well. Although one of the interesting things around was that the prime minister had the moderate Conservative MPs in Downing Street for breakfast on the day the bill was launched, and they came out pretty convinced that this was the right thing to do. And it’s interesting, as we often think of this, while this is about shoring up the red wall and all the rest of it, but frankly, this is an issue for all Tory MPs, isn’t it?

Miranda Green
Well, they do seem to think that their voters care about it, even though the public as a whole has it very low down their list of priorities. I mean, as you would imagine at the moment in what pollsters call the list of salient issues, the economy is way out in front, then inflation, which is a sort of subset of the economy, and then the health service. It’s down to about sort of between 20 and 30 per cent of people actually thinking that immigration is currently a priority. So in a sense, for the voting public as a whole, it might not be, but they clearly think that for their voters it matters. And actually, this very sort of hardline idea that you should refuse to accept asylum applications in the UK if someone coming here illegally could reasonably have claimed asylum in another what they call ‘safe country’, as you’ve explained it, Jasmine, that’s got 68 per cent support. So, you know, there is an appetite for some sort of crackdown. I think also because people do respond to the idea that it’s organised crime involved and that, quite a lot of the time, it ends in human tragedy.

George Parker
Hmm. And you often hear ministers and the prime minister talking about the sort of trafficking rings and so on. Jasmine, you spent a lot of time talking to Tory MPs. How has it gone down with them?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
So I think when it was being brief there was a little bit of cautious optimism. As we all know, there have been several announcements on immigration and lots of promises made. I think this also comes off the back of generalised optimism following the Windsor framework. And so there is a feeling among Conservative MPs that Sunak is getting a grip on administration and is capable of delivering some of these more tricky policy areas. Just touching on Miranda’s point, I do think the NHS and the economy are first and foremost in the public’s mind, but chatting to Tory MPs, one thing they said to me consistently is that this topic has essentially united the left and right of the party. So you have the right of the party who are more naturally conservative about immigration more generally. But then there are a lot of Tory moderates in those southern seats. Perhaps those leafy affluent seats are LibDem-facing that are hearing from constituents worried about the humanitarian angle of this. And so there is this pressure from members just from that inbox to actually address this issue. And so I think it was interesting, Suella Braverman gave an interview with the BBC where she was asked about home office estimates suggesting that as many as 80,000 people could be travelling via small boats this year. And she said that that’s a possibility that we could be seeing those numbers. And so even if it is proving to be effective, we’re not really going to see that effect by the next general election.

George Parker
Yeah, that’s a really good question, is it? Because the prime minister was standing at a lectern in Downing Street with a slogan underneath saying “Stop the boats.” Downing Street clarified that he meant he was gonna stop all of the boats. And Miranda, let’s just imagine the almost unimaginable and let’s say some boats are still coming across the English Channel . . . 

Miranda Green
Yeah

George Parker
. . . in the run-up to the general election.

Miranda Green
Yeah

George Parker
What’s Rishi Sunak gonna say then?

Miranda Green
It’s very difficult, isn’t it? Because it’s like drawing attention to a policy that hasn’t been effective. So in that sort of medium-term horizon, this may turn out to have been a bad place to focus energy. And as Jasmine, you’re absolutely right. Of course, a lot of those constituencies along the south coast are actually really hard-fought, either as Tory LibDem marginals in the sort of slightly more affluent south coast, but also there’s a lot of Labour Tory marginals as well. So it could turn out to have been a bit of a mistake. I mean at the moment four out of five voters think that the government’s been incompetent in handling the small boats issue. So how much do they think that by the time of a general election they’ll have driven that figure into reverse? You know, it’s very, very unlikely, isn’t it, I would say.

George Parker
So before we get that, we’re gonna get into the blame game. I mean, first of all, let’s talk about the politics. There’s gonna be a battle in parliament, first of all, isn’t there? Jasmine, does Rishi Sunak think the Labour Party aren’t gonna get on the wrong side of public opinion on this?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
I mean, that’s what they’re hoping. In an ideal world for the Conservatives, the Labour party would have opposed it on moral grounds, saying that this is inhumane and then the government would have had a very clear argument of, well, we’re pro-stopping immigration and the Labour party just wants to let everyone in. And we know during Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, that is what I tried to do. Instead, the Labour party have questioned the practicality of it and how it works, but ultimately I think Sunak is banking on the bill, having the vast majority support from his own backbenchers and is presuming that Labour will rally behind her. I suspect the main pushback parliamentary-wise will be in the House of Lords, which is where most of these types of legislation sort of gets unpicked and gets questioned, and that’s where we’ll see questions over the real detail and logistics of this.

George Parker
Okay, so there’s a political battle coming up then, Miranda, that’s gonna go into the courts for certain, isn’t it?

Miranda Green
Yes, but I think that’s probably where the Tory party sees most advantage in terms of, you know, their publicity campaign for being hard-line on, with small boats because every chance they have, they try and describe Keir Starmer as an activist lawyer because he was a human rights lawyer. If they’re battling with the courts again and saying we need to repatriate British justice because we’re being stopped from defending our borders, you can have a rational conversation about that, but they may find a battle in the courts quite useful.

George Parker
Hmm, indeed. And then of course, there’s a battle with the other parts of the leftie blob. To paraphrase two other problem in her letter, which she didn’t write, of course, this week. They battle with the media, in particular with Gary Lineker, Jasmine.

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
Yeah, say Gary Lineker from the BBC’s Match of the Day in response to a tweet put out by the Home Office, responded essentially criticising the government’s plans, comparing it to Nazi Germany. There’s been a lot of back and forth over this and questions over whether Lineker is going to be disciplined or sanctioned by the BBC. And naturally this plays into the whole culture wars that the Conservative party have been pretty open, but they’re leaning into and I think it helps the Conservative party create an impression that it’s the government that wants to control immigration and wants to stop small boats. And it’s, as you say, leftie lawyers, it’s members of the media, it’s the courts who are all opposing this. And I think they’re trying to build up a scapegoat because when it comes to the next general election and, inevitably, there are still small boats traveling across the channel. They can point to these various individuals and groups and say, look, that’s why we’ve not managed, we’re not this, we came up with a good plan and all these opposing voices managed to stop us.

George Parker
Do you think that’s going to work as an electoral strategy, Miranda, blaming Gary Lineker rather than yourself for having been in office for 15 years and failing to fix it?

Miranda Green
Uh, no, I don’t. And I also think that, you know, in terms of public figures who you don’t want to be against, people more briefed on the footballing universe than I may have views about Gary Lineker stronger than mine. But they also got in trouble this week when asked about Mo Farah, the Olympian hero of the nation, who was trafficked here. You know, would Mo Farah have been granted asylum and then citizenship under these new laws?

George Parker
I don’t think so. I think he’d have been deported at the age of 18 wouldn’t he?

Miranda Green
Well, exactly. But he really did not want to answer that question. And, you know, actually, also the Board of Deputies of British Jews has come out saying they’re uncomfortable with some of this. Although the Labour party, as Jasmine has rightly said, is very, very chary of attacking this legislation on sort of humanitarian grounds and wants to focus on the practicalities and whether it’s workable. They could find a lot of other people lining up to point out that it’s also inhumane.

George Parker
I was talking, Jasmine, finally, to a Tory strategist, who said there was a risk of going down the culture wars route in the next election because there’s a danger of having the Tory party branded the Nasty party. It seems to me in the case of this policy, that’s a risk Rishi Sunak’s prepared to take. I think the bigger risk for him is being seen to do not enough to tackle the boats issue.

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
Yeah, I think that’s fair. I do believe it’s one of those policy areas that it would be politically impossible for Sunak to ignore. If you think about the Brexit and the arguments of taking back control, the image of individuals who were vulnerable on these very flimsy-looking boats travelling across the Channel, it goes against that notion of taking control of our borders. And so, Sunak is betting that actually if he frames as an argument of we as a government are against people trafficking and criminal gangs, I think that it will be more effective versus sitting back and just watching it happen.

George Parker
Jasmine and Miranda, thanks very much.

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Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak was in Paris on Friday for talks with Emmanuel Macron, a sign of a thaw in relations after years of post-Brexit froideur. And let’s see how many more gratuitous French words I can chuck into this pot. This was Rishi Sunak.

Rishi Sunak
I believe today’s meeting does mark a new beginning and entente renewed. We are looking to the future, a future that builds on all that we share — our history, our geography, our values. And a future that is far more ambitious about how we work together to improve the lives of the people that we serve.

George Parker
And this was Emmanuel Macron.

Emmanuel Macron
My wish, definitely — because it’s, it makes sense with our history or geography, our DNA I would say — is to have the best possible relation and the closest alliance. But it will depend on our commitment, our willingness. But I’m sure we will do it.

George Parker
Peter Ricketts, first of all, could you describe the mood between Britain and France before Rishi Sunak became prime minister last year?

Peter Ricketts
Well it was very rocky, George. In fact, I think it was as bad as any time I can remember in my 40 years as a diplomat. It was bad over Iraq in 2003. But this was four or five years of progressive loss of trust and confidence, particularly in Paris, about British ministers. And it peaked under Boris Johnson, and the arrival of Rishi Sunak and the war in Ukraine together, I think, have prompted a major reset which is happening over the next two weeks.

George Parker
And the fact that Rishi Sunak and the EU are able to deliver that post-Brexit deal in Northern Ireland, that presumably has helped to improve the mood ahead of the summit.

Peter Ricketts
That was very important. Although interestingly, Macron committed to a UK-French summit before knowing the outcome on the Northern Ireland protocol. So that has lifted another cloud and then the summit being followed by the first-ever state visit by the King to France in two weeks’ time. That really shows that we’re on a definite upward swing now.

George Parker
So Leila, what’s the relationship like between Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron? I mean, they both seem rather alike, don’t they?

Leila Abboud
Yeah, I mean, there was this sort of famous picture when they met each other for the first time. They did these — kind of — rounds on the Internet of them looking quite pleased, both in their very matchy-matchy, lovely, tailored suits. They have similar profiles, just they sort of were, you know, involved in the business world before going into politics. They’re both of the same generation and they’re both in their forties. I mean, they can just kind of see the two personalities kind of meshing in a way that Michael and Boris Johnson never would have. That relationship was very tense, and I think the French had a lot of disdain and mistrust for Boris Johnson for a while. So it can’t get worse than it was before.

George Parker
And they both come from sort of financial service-y, technocratic backgrounds, don’t they, as well, which probably helps.

Leila Abboud
They do, they do.

George Parker
So the atmospherics have improved, Peter. What do you think the two sides can actually deliver in terms of concrete stuff coming out of this summit?

Peter Ricketts
I don’t think there was ever likely to be any major breakthrough announcement. Both sides wanted to send a very clear message that with a war in Europe, Europe’s two leading military powers, France and Britain, were shoulder to shoulder in standing with Ukraine. And on the British side, of course, the prime minister wanted a major message from the French on migration. He was never gonna get everything he wanted and a returns agreement, whereby people are sent back to France if they get to the UK but then fail an asylum application. That was never gonna happen. The politics in France for that would have been toxic. But overall, I think this summit now empowers the two bureaucracies to work together to come up with further concrete projects and areas where the UK and France can work together. That’s entirely positive.

George Parker
And in what sort of areas, Leila, would you say, where we got to see the most fruitful cooperation in the next few years?

Leila Abboud
It sort of depends who you ask. I did have one French official tell me that while this visit will be more about the atmospherics and the symbolism and the photo ops, if it did nothing else, than lay the groundwork for another summit in a year where they could kind of go more deeply into the subjects themselves and then that would be a good thing. I think that from the French point of view, they’re very interested in kind of rekindling the defence cooperation, security, maybe joint procurement. These are things which France and the UK, which are the biggest militaries in Europe and both nuclear powers really should be able to do good things together. It kind of stalled in the past few years because of the Brexit tensions and also the tensions over Orcas, that’s the submarine deal. But the British priority is actually on migration. And that one, as Peter mentioned, is a little bit harder to resolve. So, I think there will be probably not a lot of concrete changes. You know, in terms of the returns agreement, that’s something that France is just simply not gonna sign up to. It’s a non-starter for them. So I think they’ll try to be polite, but that’s something that they’re gonna work towards.

George Parker
And Leila, we’ve had a lot of coverage in the UK press this week about the small-boats issue of illegal migration. From a very British perspective here, how is the issue seen in France and in the French media?

Leila Abboud
It’s really interesting. Even the term small boats, there’s no French translation for it. This is not really a public issue here. About two years ago, when there was a quite bad drowning of 27 migrants in the Channel, it was, you know, front page news for a few weeks and a lot of hand-wringing. And this is objectively a terrible occurrence. But once that faded, it’s not a subject which is top of mind for most French people. It’s kind of strange because we are in a moment where immigration and issues of national identity are top of mind for French people. And that’s sort of proven by the increasing popularity of Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party. So I think on the UK side, it’s just kind of become an emblematic thing, which is driving a lot of the domestic political agenda. And talk about immigration. The boat is not as much of a happy symbol.

George Parker
So, Peter, as well as being the former British ambassador to Paris, you were, of course, the national security adviser, and you’ll have dealt very closely with your French counterparts, that, I’m sure. How have things evolved since you held that job in terms of the capacity of Britain and France to project power internationally.

Peter Ricketts
In 2010, we had a landmark agreement with the French called the Lancaster House Agreement where we signed up to a whole series of areas of cooperation, defence. The armed forces working much more closely together, also defence industrial projects where they, two major defence industries in Europe would cooperate. Quite a lot of the law has gone out of that frankly, since then, partly because of Brexit and partly because the French priority is rather turned towards Germany. But this war in Ukraine has brought it back and I think there’s a real imperative on both sides now to work together and a joint recognition actually, that the war in Ukraine has shown some pretty drastic shortfalls in the two armed forces. And then when you look at the Indo-Pacific, which of course has been a great area of Anglo-US entente with the Australians, the French feeling rather left out. Actually, if it came to a shooting war in Taiwan, neither France nor Britain would be more than a secondary player. And I think there’s a feeling in both London and Paris that they ought to be talking about the Indo-Pacific, recognising that European security is gonna be the dominant issue for both countries. So, it’s a recognition that we are no longer either of these completely global powers. We need to concentrate and prioritise. And for the moment, it’s the war in Europe which is the priority.

George Parker
And Leila, there’s in the communique after the summit, there was some discussion about having coordination between the UK and France, about deploying carriers to the Indo-Pacific — Britain has two, France has one. Is that really a viable prospect or are we sort of suffering from delusions of grandeur here?

Leila Abboud
I mean, I’ll try to stay polite but, as Peter said, neither France or the UK has the reach or breadth to be a real naval power any more. But I do think that France really does want to kinda maintain its presence in the Indo-Pacific. They have kind of far-flung territories that they want to sort of, not defend but, you know, maintain a credible position in the Indo-Pacific. I think they also see it as part of their identity as a country with nuclear weapons. So I think it’s important for them to continue to do the naval work. And if they do it together, it probably makes it a bit more credible than if they were to do it separately.

George Parker
And Leila, what’s the principal scope, do you think, for future industrial and business cooperation between the two sides, is it on nuclear technology, which has some of the most fruitful areas?

Leila Abboud
Yeah. So that’s actually an area where I think France is quite eager to bring the UK a little bit closer to its positions on nuclear. So France is fighting a bit of a lonely battle in the EU to advocate for its nuclear industry. And the UK has made a choice to invest in nuclear power plants or Sizewell, which is going to be built with EDF, the French state-backed nuclear operator. I think there’s a lot more they can do there, and France is really hungry for allies in that area. So I think it would be perceived very positively here if they could come up with something from the summit that would show that. And in terms of business cooperation, I mean, I don’t know, business is a competition, realistically. And our FT office, which I’m sitting in right now, has a Bank of America office across the street from it, which is much busier now because there’s a lot of bankers that have come back here after Brexit. So I wouldn’t put too much stock in the idea that there’s gonna be more cooperation on business. I think that fundamentally Paris and London have quite different economic bases and they’re in competition on many things.

George Parker
And Peter, finally to you. I just wondered whether the relationship will ever be quite the same after Brexit. I used to work in Brussels and you had this constant churn of ministers meeting each other at council meetings, prime ministers and presidents meeting at regular summit meetings. You know, having a summit every five years or even every year. It’s not the same depth or don’t quite the same complicity between the two sides as you would’ve done if you were partners inside the EU. Would you?

Peter Ricketts
No, I think that’s right. Although there are these enormous shared interests that Leila was talking about nuclear energy. EDF is already building one of the largest construction sites in Europe — Hinkley Point in Somerset — and now set to take on a second site at Sizewell. That’s a 50-year cooperation in nuclear energy and in defence we are still the two closest European powers. But you’re right, we are not round the EU table. There isn’t the same depth and intensity of cooperation. That’s why I hope that this or our future government will agree that we should get back to some sort of structured dialogue, both with the French but also with the EU as well, so that ministers find in their diaries on a regular basis another date in Paris or Berlin or Brussels to be talking to European counterparts. Without that, it does tend to slip. And EU countries, of course, have a higher loyalty to each other than they ever will to the UK. So the relationship will be different. But in the world after the Ukraine war, I think Britain and France suddenly find they have many more shared interests and perhaps they remembered.

George Parker
Peter Ricketts and Leila Abboud, thank you very much.

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And that’s it for this episode of Payne’s Politics. If you like the podcast, we’d recommend subscribing. You can find us through all the usual channels to receive episodes as soon as they’re released. And we also appreciate positive reviews and ratings. Payne’s politics was presented by me, George Parker, and produced by Anna Dedhar and Persis Love. The sound engineer is Breen Turner. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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