Bibby Stockholm barge: Rishi Sunak’s promises over asylum seekers are just a smokescreen
The stakes are really high for Rishi Sunak on immigration, having made stopping the small boats one of the top priorities for his government.
But the promised arrival of asylum seekers on both the Bibby Stockholm barge and also at large land sites like former RAF bases are something of a smokescreen when it comes to making real progress on the issue.
Who will be living on the Bibby Stockholm – and what’s it like on board?
Part of what would be judged a victory on small boats for the prime minister involves redirecting the narrative: giving a sense that the government does have control and that it isn’t providing a luxurious landing for asylum seekers when they arrive on Britain’s shores.
To do that, the government is keen to describe the accommodation barge and the repurposed site at a former air base in Essex as “basic” – but to put everything in context, the numbers that these facilities can hold is relatively small and the problem is huge.
But as one immigration solicitor recently said to me, the PM is “barking up the wrong tree” in making small boats his goal when net migration has reached unprecedented levels.
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Perhaps the only thing that will stop people coming through the back door on small boats or through the front door via overstaying visas would be the oft-promised plan to send people to Rwanda.
It’s been over a year now since a government flight to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was aborted at the last minute: the issue has since been dragged through the courts and could still drag on until early 2024.
But when I talk to migrants currently housed in hotels, there is a genuine fear the government could still clear a legal path to get a flight off the ground.
While the government focuses its messaging on small boats, legal net migration was 606,000 in the year to December 2022 – the highest on record for a calendar year.
Bibby Stockholm provides a distraction from that.