‘Smash the gangs’ is the fascinating slogan that Keir Starmer’s government has settled on for tackling illegal migration. What is the government going to do to stop the hundreds – sometimes thousands – of people sailing across the Channel and coming into England each day? ‘We will smash the gangs,’ they say.

The slogan is interesting for reasons beyond the tough-guy rhetoric. For it suggests, of course, that it is people-smuggling gangs that are the main problem. Perhaps our government sees them as being like press gangs back in the day, roaming around northern France, waylaying passing migrants and forcing them on to rubber dinghies to begin a new life in Britain. Or perhaps they see them as being like Al Capone’s or some other mobster’s gang: impossible to know how to snare until law enforcement, ever vigilant, finally catches the syndicate slipping up and visibly breaking the law.

While the eunuchs at Westminster continue this game, the results of their failure get felt elsewhere. Take Epping in Essex. Until recently, The Bell Hotel in Epping was simply a three-star hotel with a pleasant-looking breakfast buffet. Today it is a ‘migrant hotel’ – one of the many hotels in this country that taxpayers in our munificence have decided to block-book. Not for ourselves, of course – if you have always worked hard, played by the rules and paid your taxes then you will have........

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