Yvette Cooper's new border force scheme won't stop the boats: Yorkshire Post Letters

Yvette Cooper, now our new Home Secretary in the Starmer government, is now faced with the issue that seems to kill all others and become more and more urgent with the passing of each day.

We hear of her strategy to stop the boats and other illegal entrants. Unfortunately, as opposition spokeswoman, she led Labour to vote against all the Tories’ attempts to stem this continuous tide, regularly portraying the illegals as genuine asylum seekers. But even the crabs on the shingle must be recognising the vast majority are economic illegals as some throw their phones and passports into the Channel.

The plan to replace the current Border Force with another more effective Labour-led Border Force intending to hound out the ruthless thugs who run the racket, both here and on the Continent, will have left the Italian carabinieri waiting in awed expectation since they have been attempting to eliminate the Mafia for over a century. It all reminds me of magic money trees.

Remember, this is Labour and not some ultra-efficient organisation. The Home Secretary’s ideas are both shallow and naïve. A tough minister or negotiator, she is not.

Her scheme is about as useless as Worzel Gummidge wanting his clothes ironing and will further damage Rachel Reeves’ reputation in pushing up our taxes as the boats keep on scraping along our beaches with all the impact on our already overstressed infra-structure.

Another prong of Labour’s attempt at reducing immigration is to negotiate with the EU to contain the mass of immigrants and redistribute them fairly around each nation which entails the UK accepting an additional legal quota which may be as long as a piece of string for the EU is not going to be all that amenable to such a request.

And many commentators suspect that this could be Sir Keir Starmer’s first tentative step to inch the UK back into the EU.

Moreover, the intention of Labour in scattering these, largely young, men around the country to be organised by local authorities, to my mind, will only inflame the already febrile situation. Starmer’s honeymoon period, if he had any, will quickly dissolve and then even the much vilified Conservative administration may begin to appear a tint rosier as Starmer and Cooper begin to reveal their true fitness and competence to rule as the increasing civic turbulence and decreasing morale in Britain gains more momentum, brought on mainly by those errant boats.

Peter Hyde, Driffield.

Yvette Cooper says that the public has lost confidence in the police, Well whose fault is that? Successive governments have interfered with police matters. When I served forces were run by Chief Constables under the direction of the of the Home Office and Inspectors of Constabulary. Now we have Police and Crime Commissioners and the CPS interfering with day to day matters. The onetime selection for the best person for the job has been replaced by the system of tick boxes. No more country bobbies and apparently no more beat officers contacting the public day by day.