Ministers want to show toughness on immigration

This government, like the one before, is not in control of illegal immigration.

There were more than 23,000 people crossing the English Channel in small boats between Labour winning the general election last July and the end of last year.

More people are dying than ever before.

The dead are found among the living when dinghies are intercepted; the Border Force confronts floating crime scenes.

Labour want to take on any perception that they are soft or wishy washy about all this, and are adopting a strategy of show and don't just tell.

Ministers want to give off a sense of demonstrable toughness, visible muscularity.

Ten days ago, I was among a handful of reporters taken inside one of the Operation Rooms of the government's Small Boats Command.

A giant screen on the wall maps out the French coast and the spots where launch attempts are most frequent.

A dozen or so staff are trawling so-called open source data – social media and the like – for intelligence of plots emerging.

Elsewhere, in places reporters wouldn't get invited, the security services chip in with their own covert intelligence.

Now, for the first time, the Home Office is publishing pictures – still images and video – of illegal immigrants being deported.

And they are talking up what they call a "surge" and a "blitz" in going after those working illegally in the UK.

The Conservatives say the government has made a big mistake cancelling the plan to send some migrants to Rwanda, as they believe it put people off trying to make it to the UK.

They also want it to take much longer, as Kemi Badenoch told me last week, for migrants to gain British citizenship.

And Reform UK reckons what the government has to say, and has done, is pathetic in comparison with the scale of the issue.

Reform's upward trend in the opinion polls is the crucial political context here.

Nigel Farage's party is spooking Labour now, as well as the Conservatives.

Reform – many of whose supporters are drawn to them because of their uncompromising views on immigration - said over the weekend that it now has more than 200,000 members.

Meanwhile Labour officials have noted, and in some cases admired, the theatrical, showy style of President Trump's opening weeks back in the White House: his capacity to illustrate vividly to his supporters and others what he is achieving.

Sir Keir Starmer, to put it gently, is a rather different character, but the UK government is channelling a bit of the White House playbook – and expect more of this to come.

More than 40 countries are being invited to a summit on border security in London at the end of next month.

And there will be more talk too about tackling legal migration.

What is known as a White Paper is expected in March or April, where ideas to squeeze the numbers arriving legitimately will be set out.

Immigration is a massive concern to so, so many people - and so it matters in and of itself.

But it matters for a wider reason too: the numbers arriving both legally and illegally are, to many, a visible, expensive daily illustration of state failure and broken promises.

What we are now seeing is a government attempting to show what it is trying to do about it.

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