Small boats are becoming a big problem for Rishi. Four Tory backbenchers raised the issue at PMQs. Andrew Selous asked about a ‘much-loved’ hotel in his constituency which the Home Office has annexed on behalf of their beloved migrants. Weddings and family parties have been cancelled. Selous, rather ludicrously, asked the PM to ‘redouble his efforts’ to solve the crisis.

Let’s look at the maths. Redoubling zero gives you zero. And zero is what Rishi is doing to deter the boats and send new arrivals packing. He confessed as much.

The PM is campaigning to please people who loathe him

Some time in the future he plans to pass a miraculous new bill aimed at bogus asylum claimants but he has little faith in its effectiveness. All he committed himself to was ‘reducing the numbers of asylum seekers living in hotels’. Which doesn’t mean cutting off the VIP pipeline that whisks newcomers straight into a three- or four-star hostel for an unlimited holiday.

Sunak waffled about ‘a sustainable solution’ and ‘alternative sites of accommodation.’ Meaning what? Perhaps new hotels built for anyone who arrives here from anywhere. He could create whole villages or found garden cities to house them. Plenty in Britain would support this happy-clappy one-world approach but none of them vote Conservative. The PM is campaigning to please people who loathe him.

One backbencher begged Rishi to fast-track his new bill and pass it next week. Rishi ignored him. Esther McVey wanted to know exactly when Rishi’s game-changing reform will reach the statute book. He couldn’t tell her.

But new laws aren’t the issue. The neglect of existing laws encourages the dinghies. Anyone landing on a beach could easily be arrested on suspicion of entering the country illegally but none are. Pictures of migrants in handcuffs would send a powerful and instant message to the inmates of the Calais camps.

And yet that won’t happen because our cops seem to detest the laws they’re appointed to uphold. They enjoy the swish motorbikes and the glamorous helicopters. They like barrelling around in squad cars going nee-naw nee-naw. And they have fun wearing face paint and performing Morris dances at Pride. But arresting criminals is hard work. And sensible officers avoid contact with law-breakers at all costs. Migrants won’t stop arriving until a police force is taken over by a police chief who believes in policing.

Sir Keir Starmer got into the weeds over the Northern Ireland protocol. To avoid a hard border, he said, it’s inevitable that ‘Northern Ireland will continue to follow some EU law’. That’s his desired outcome, obviously, and he’ll use it as a bridgehead to rejoining. Today he was effectively negotiating with the EU on the floor of the House and outlining the deal he wants.

Rishi spotted this. ‘It’s his usual position. Give the EU a blank cheque and agree to anything they offer…That’s not a strategy that’s surrender.’

Sir Keir had a message for the ‘irreconcilables’ among the Tories who want to quit the European Court of Justice (ECJ). He ordered Rishi to pass his words of wisdom on to them. ‘That’s never going to happen.’

Astonishing effrontery. But Sir Keir feels untouchable at the moment, perhaps with justification. Even if Rishi extricates us from the ECJ’s tentacles, Starmer can reverse that policy when he wins office.

This was a peculiar day in parliament. Staring Rishi in the face are two powerful, vote-winning opportunities: punching back against EU bullies over the Northern Ireland, and declaring that Britain’s beaches belong to Britain. But he’s reluctant to pursue them vigorously because his feeble and rudderless government is busy preparing to transfer power to a feeble and rudderless Labour party.