The Labour government may not like X these days but they have turned to another social media platform in their latest bid to smash the gangs and stop the boats. As of today, an official Home Office TikTok account will have the people smugglers quaking in their boots as it posts images of illegal migrants and foreign criminals being arrested, detained and deported.

What is a TikTok channel if not gesture politics?

Called ‘Secure Borders UK’, the TikTok channel’s mission statement is ‘restoring order and control to our borders’. It’s a similar refrain to the rhetoric deployed by Keir Starmer in May 2024 as he campaigned to become PM. In a speech that month he outlined how he would stop the boats. He also castigated the Tories for their attempts to curb illegal immigration. ‘We need to turn the page and move on from an unhealthy interest in gesture politics that has long defined this policy area,’ declared Starmer.

What is a TikTok channel if not gesture politics? The same goes for Starmer’s ‘One in One Out’ scheme, launched with such fanfare last summer. By the end of 2025, 193 migrants had been returned to France and 195 had arrived. You do the maths.

Last week the first scheduled return flight of 2026 was cancelled at the last minutes without explanation. Officials declined to elaborate, citing ‘operational confidentiality’.

Last year 41,472 migrants crossed the English Channel illegally in small boats, up from 36,816 in 2024. For the 12 months ending June 2025, nearly 52,000 people were granted refugee protection, which was a 24 per cent drop on the previous year. The countries most represented in refugee protection status are Iranians, Sudanese, Afghans, Eritreans and Pakistanis.

Despite the abject failure of the ‘One n One Out’ scheme, Keir Starmer boasted to his MPs in a late-night briefing on Monday that immigration is ‘firmly under control’. This, he added, would herald ‘change and renewal this year. Our country is moving in the right direction’.

The British public might need more convincing than Labour MPs that the migrant crisis has been cracked.

One country that definitely has moved in the right direction is Denmark. Yesterday they announced that the total number of asylum application granted in 2025 was 839 – a new record low, surpassing the 860 approvals in 2024. In response to the news, immigration minister Rasmus Stoklund said it is ‘absolutely critical that as few foreigners as possible come to Denmark and obtain asylum.’

This is because the priority of the left-wing Danish government is to look after its most disadvantaged, a point made in 2023 by Kaare Dybvad, Denmark’s immigration minister at the time. A French journalist asked if his country’s immigration policy wasn’t a little too hardline, to which he replied: ‘If you’re from the left then you must have a strict immigration policy because it’s always the working class which pays the price of immigration… never the rich or bourgeois.’

Reports at the end of last year suggested that Labour was seeking ‘inspiration’ from Denmark in its approach to mass immigration. The same was said of the French government in 2023. Olivier Véran, the government’s official spokesman, visited Copenhagen on a fact-finding tour to learn the secret of Denmark’s success. And the result? France experienced record numbers of legal and illegal immigration in 2024.

That’s why Britons should perhaps hold their breath when they hear their government declare that there are adopting the Danish approach. Is Starmer prepared to be as tough as his Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen, and her ‘hostile environment’ strategy?

In her traditional New Year’s Day speech Frederiksen used language that would appall most Labour MPs. She promised a comprehensive reform on deportation, boasting it will ‘mean even more criminal foreigners will be sent out of Denmark.’

Frederiksen talked with pride of ‘our willingness to push the boundaries of convention’, and she said she was ready to overstep the ECHR because her priority is ‘the protection of the public and the victims, not the perpetrator.’

She finished with what was interpreted as a warning to Islamic extremism, saying Denmark didn’t want their ‘culture of dominance’.

Admittedly, Starmer talked tough in May last year, during a press conference on the Immigration White Paper. It was imperative to ‘finally take back control of our borders’, thundered the PM, otherwise ‘we risk becoming an island of strangers’.

A month later Starmer said he deeply regretted his choice of words. They were, he added, too close to the rhetoric of Enoch Powell. Too close, also, perhaps, to the Danish government?

They are prepared to do what is necessary to protect their people. Is the British government?