The images are striking, deliberately so. They show men being taken off a bus and up the stairway of a charter jet to be deported from the UK. One has his hands shackled, escorted by numerous Border Force staff. The government, frustrated by its own polling, which shows voters don’t believe it has increased the number of people being removed, is now resorting to Trump-style TV footage of the deportation flight process.

It’s a show-not-tell strategy in response to Reform’s rise in the polls – and it has a whiff of panic about it. After rightly declaring the Rwanda plan a gimmick and immediately consigning it to the scrapheap of failed policies, the government is now getting lost in performative tactics that are destined to fail.

Forcing those whose asylum applications have been rejected or who have overstayed their visas on to planes has never been the most effective way to return people and never will be. Being punitive just scares people into hiding. They lose contact with the authorities, living a life on the margins.

Voluntary returns are far more effective, and the government should know this because it was the last Labour administration that commissioned independent agencies to run a voluntary programme that saw numbers increase. Building trust with refugee and migrant communities and treating people........

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