‘Stop the boasts’: Rishi Sunak risks overpromising and underdelivering

Editorial: Even if the PM did ‘stop the boats’, there would still be around 160,000 people awaiting an initial decision

The PM speaking during a press conference at Western Jet Foil processing centre in Dover on Monday (PA)

The prime minister may have been unwise to make such a bold and bald claim that he will “stop the boats” by the end of 2023, but the latest migration trends suggest that he is at least making some progress in the most problematic of the five priorities he has set himself for this year.

They also point to some of the ways in which he might come closer to reaching what has always been an overambitious target (even if it is not taken literally). At a time when he finds himself in open warfare with Boris Johnson over the Covid-19 inquiry, his personal ratings have been slipping a little, so some better news on policy “delivery” is no doubt very welcome.

On his own terms, then, Rishi Sunak can take some satisfaction in the news that the trend in boat crossings is firmly down in the first few months of the year, by around a fifth. Over such a long period as five months, weather conditions cannot have played such a major part in slowing the flow, and it does seem that specific measures have yielded results.