Stop the Boats has failed

An impossible pledge brings predictable disaster

It is now just over a year since Rishi Sunak unveiled “Stop the Boats” as one of the five pledges he asked voters to judge his government against. Aside from the obvious goal of, well, stopping the boats carrying irregular migrants across the Channel, this pledge had several political goals. It was designed to restore public confidence in the Conservatives’ handling of immigration, rebuild the party’s lead over Labour in a traditional area of strength, rebuild Boris Johnson’s “Get Brexit Done” coalition by recovering support from disaffected, migration sceptical Leave voters, see off competition for those voters from Nigel Farage and ReformUK and shift the spotlight onto an issue of greater Tory strength ahead of the general election. “Stop the boats” has failed to achieve any of these goals.

The boats haven’t stopped

“Stop the Boats” has failed in the most basic sense - the often repeated pledge is very clear: the boats will stop. The boats haven’t stopped.¹ While the government can chalk up some wins in this area - a deal with the Albanian government has drastically curtailed the number of Albanians in small boats; further deals have been done to beef up policing on French beaches; and overall numbers in 2023 are substantially lower than in 2022 - these don’t meet the pledge plastered on the lectern every time Rishi Sunak speaks to the country on the issue. “Stop the Boats.” Not “slow down the boats”. Not “fewer boats from one specific small country in the Balkans”. Not “get boat flow levels down to where they were two years ago”.

If your slogan is “stop the boats” you will be judged on whether the boats have stopped. Have the boats stopped? No, they have not. Will the boats stop? No, they will not. Is there anything the government can realistically do which will make the boats stop before polling day? No, there is not.²

Small boat crossings 2019-2023

Data visualisation source: BBC News 15th December 2023

Public confidence hasn’t been restored

As the great American political researcher V O Key famously said “Voters aren’t fools”. If the centre piece of your immigration policy is a promise to “Stop the boats” and then you then fail to stop the boats, you can’t be surprised if voters judge you harshly. Thus it has proved.

There has been no improvement in the government’s approval ratings on immigration since “Stop the Boats” launched - quite the opposite. The public gave the outgoing Johnson government a quite dismal rating of -56 on immigration in IPSOS-MORI’s polling from July 2022. By July 2023, after six months of “Stop the Boats” that rating had fallen further to -64. And last month, after a full year of “Stop the Boats”, the score had touched a new low of -69. The share of voters who now say the government is doing a good job on immigration is now just ten per cent. That’s about as low as approval ratings can go.³

“Do you think the government has done a good job or a bad job at handling immigration?” (net good-bad score)

Source: IPSOS-MORI political monitor December 2023

The gap with Labour has not been closed

It is unusual for the Conservatives to trail on immigration - voters have long been sceptical of Labour on the issue, with migration sceptics in particular preferring the more hardline Tory approach. Closing the gap with Labour on the issue, or even restoring a substantial Tory lead, should therefore have been low hanging fruit for the “Stop the boats” campaign. But, again, that relied on actually delivering on the promise. Failure has had the opposite effect.

In December 2022, Labour was preferred to the Conservatives as the best party to handle asylum and immigration by a 4 point margin - 23% vs 19%. More than half of those asked said “don’t know”, “other” or “none”.

In January 2024, after a year of “Stop the Boats”, Labour was preferred to the Conservatives by a 6 point margin - 22% vs 16%. And nearly six in ten said “don’t know”, “other”, or “none”.

A year of “stop the boats” has increased Labour’s historically unprecedented lead on immigration, with even fewer voters now preferring the Tories on the issue, and even more voters joining the majority with little faith in either big party.

Which political party would be best at handling asylum and immigration?

Source: YouGov

The 2019 Coalition has not been rebuilt

“Stop the Boats” was also seen as a means to reunite the 2019 Conservative electoral coalition, as scepticism about immigration was one of the more widely shared features of that coalition. Tory strategists were particularly hopeful that this campaign could restore their fortunes with the much discussed (though often misunderstood) “red wall voter” - who according to stereotype is ancestrally Labour, but strongly pro-Brexit and not at all keen on immigration. Here, too, “Stop the boats” has been a total dud.

In December 2022, the Conservatives led Labour among Leave voters by a 19 point margin - 30% vs 11% - as the best party to handle immigration. 58% of Leave voters said “don’t know”, “none” or “other”.

In January 2024, the Conservatives’ lead among Leave voters had fallen to 16 points - 26% vs 10% - while the share of voters rejecting both parties’ offers had risen to 62%.

It is a similar story if we look at other groups where the Tories outperformed in 2019 - pensioners, working class voters, voters in the Midlands and the North. After a year of “Stop the Boats”, the Tories have made no progress or are going backwards among all of these groups. Far from revitalising the 2019 coalition, Sunak’s campaign has alienated “red wall” groups further.

Which political party would be best at handling asylum and immigration? (Leave voters only)

Source: YouGov

The threat from Nigel Farage and Reform has not been seen off

“Stop the boats” was also a campaign clearly designed to close off any threat to the Conservatives from Nigel Farage on the radical right flank. It is the kind of populist promise used with much success by Farage in the past. But a year of failure, dismal approval ratings and growing voter alienation on the issue have instead provided the perfect environment for a new revolt on the right, and that is exactly what the polling is now showing. ReformUK support has steadily grown throughout the year of “Stop the Boats”, with the rise accelerating in recent months.

ReformUK average vote share December 2021-January 2024

Source: YouGov. Other pollsters show the same general pattern.

This outcome was not hard to predict. In my post on “Stop the Boats” last March, I spelled out the problem for the Conservatives:

“Stop the boats” could instead be framed as a defensive policy - it may not turn things around, but it at least helps put a floor on Conservative support and deters a possible Farageist challenge on the party’s right flank….[T]his approach only works if "stop the boats" actually...stops the boats. Which…is unlikely at least in the short term. Heavy promotion of a slogan which cannot be delivered upon risks raising then dashing expectations with unhappy low trust voters who find UKIP type politics appealing. Far from heading off a Farageist insurgency, a failed “stop the boats” promise may encourage one.”

One year on and Reform UK support has nearly doubled. Nigel Farage is back in the headlines, national media outlets are doing profiles on his lieutenant and current ReformUK leader Richard Tice, and Conservative MPs are in a state of panic over MRP models showing Reform decimating their majorities.

Immigration is now in the electoral spotlight…but that’s not helping

“Stop the boats” campaigners can point to one clear success - a lot more voters now say immigration is a political priority. The share of voters naming immigration as a top issue in IPSOS-MORI’s “issues index” - which records what voters say without prompting - has risen by around ten percentage points and now stands around a quarter. But nearly all of this rise has come among Conservative voters unhappy with the government’s record on the issue and unlikely to believe the government’s promises about progress to come. Over four in ten Tory voters now name immigration as a top priority, around double the share before “Stop the Boats”, and enough to make immigration the number one issue for existing Tory voters. While the government’s campaigns on the issue are not the only factor driving up its salience, “Stop the boats” has received massive media attention and ensured that growing voter concerns are strongly focussed on this one aspect of the sprawling immigration system.

Meanwhile attention among Labour voters has barely risen, from around 10 per cent in late 2022 to the low teens (and falling) in recent months. This huge disparity in political attention is a political trap. The Conservatives now cannot ignore immigration when their own voters are so focussed on it. But talking even more about an issue which is such a low priority for Labour voters will reinforce such voters’ perceptions that the government is out of touch with their concerns. “Stop the Boats” is angering core voters, who care more and more, and alienating swing voters, who still care very little. This is not a formula for electoral success.

Share of voters and party supporters naming immigration as one of the most important problems facing the country

Source: IPSOS-MORI Issues Index

The Tories had hoped a campaign on immigration would drive a wedge into Labour coalition, as it did in the 2010s. Instead the Tories have divided and isolated themselves by encouraging their most socially conservative voters to mobilise and demand results that are not feasible to deliver. The result is a wedge driven into the Tory coalition, evident among MPs and activists as well as among electors. The past year have seen long and angry rows at Westminster over the “Rwanda scheme” and the government’s approach to small boats, with ever more organised and vocal campaigning from right wing backbenchers and activists who feel the government is not doing enough, culminating in the resignation of Robert Jenrick as Immigration Minister last month. Yet attempting to do more, and risking violations of international law, is a step that Tory moderates have made clear they will not tolerate. While “Stop the Boats” has certainly helped ensure much more space on the political and media agenda for immigration in the past year, encouraging Tory voters to pay close attention to an issue where Tory elites cannot agree a path forward looks more like a political failure than a success.

The bigger picture is bleak. Voters see the Conservatives as more divided than they did before “Stop the Boats” and Sunak’s approval ratings have collapsed. The Conservatives continue to be stuck in the mid 20s in vote intention polls - a result pointing to a landslide defeat. On these broader indicators, as on more specific ones, the conclusion is clear: “Stop the boats” hasn’t revived Tory fortunes, and may very well have made things worse.

Not much winning, here: Perceptions of Conservative unity, Sunak approval ratings and Conservative vote share December 2022 and December 2023

Source: YouGov (Cons divided or united), IPSOS-MORI political monitor (Sunak approvals and vote shares). Other pollsters show a similar picture

What next?

As readers of Tom Hamilton’s excellent substack will know, drawing dividing lines is one of the most important aspects of political strategy. “Stop the boats” has proved to be a terrible dividing line - it focuses attention on an issue where the government has failed and is likely to continue failing. It has deepened and hardened divides among Conservative elites. It is encouraging the very radical right insurgency it was supposed to shut down. And it is so unthreatening to the Labour opposition that Keir Starmer has taken to campaigning on the issue himself, using recent Prime Minister’s Questions to attack the government’s record on asylum. If your opponents are keener to use a dividing line than your own MPs, it might be time to shut it down.

Yet while the coming passage of the new Rwanda scheme legislation may lower the temperature in the short run, shutting down “stop the boats” before the election isn’t a realistic option. By making this one of his five key pledges, Sunak committed himself to the undeliverable promise behind the slogan. Pressing ahead is a bad option - the boats won’t stop this summer, and the arguments will continue and intensify. But retreat is even worse - it will mean admitting, just months before an election, that the government cannot deliver on its own pledge. Stick or twist, the Tories lose. Stop the boats has failed. That failure may yet get worse.

1. Here’s what the Institute for Government had to say on the matter when reviewing Sunak’s pledges: “Has the government managed to ‘stop the boats’? No. Though crossings are down, the prime minister did not pledge to reduce crossings but to stop them, and the problem of small boat crossings has not gone away. Just under 30,000 migrants were detected crossing the Channel in 2023.”

2. Even if the government succeeds in getting asylum claimants onto planes to Rwanda before the election arrives, the initial capacity of such a scheme will be in the hundreds, at most. This will not make much dent in small boat arrivals in the tens of thousands, and while the government insists the scheme will act as a deterrent, it doesn’t seem very plausible that asylum claimants willing to risk life and limb to reach British shores will be much deterred by a one in a hundred or less chance of being put on a plane to Rwanda, even if they were to hear about such a scheme, which many will not. Nor is there much chance of the government rejecting and deporting most small boat arrivals, given most come from war torn countries and dictatorships such as Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Iran, and a large majority have their claims for asylum accepted. For more on this, see this recent excellent briefing from the Oxford Migration observatory.

3. Around 5-10% will give a positive approval even on things that are universally disliked, through a mix of ignorance, random responding, partisan cheerleading and sheer bloody-mindedness. This is known as the “lizardman’s constant” - the share of people who will, for example, say they believe Lizardmen are running the Earth (4%) or say that Barack Obama is the literal anti-Christ (13%).