With one pen stroke, Donald Trump solves Britain's small boats crisis and humiliates Keir Starmer - Lee Cohen

He did not recite NGO-approved clichés about compassion. He did not outsource the safety of Americans to international bodies or activist lawyers. He recognised that the first responsibility of the state is to the people who already live within its borders.

Trump identified a deadly failure in the system and shut it down. Full stop. That is how a country regains control.

Compare this to Starmer’s Britain, where a crisis at the border is met with focus groups, rebranding exercises, and a carefully manicured vocabulary designed to avoid upsetting the Left while pretending to reassure the public.

It convinces no one. Not the Right, not the Centre, not even parts of the Labour coalition itself.

Starmer talks tough but governs catastrophically, presiding over high legal migration, continuing small-boat crossings, and an enforcement regime that looks more like risk management than border control.

Critics describe it as “open borders by stealth”, “gesture politics” and “managed decline”. And for once, the language is not hyperbolic. And the Home Secretary’s tough words are nothing but political kabuki theatre.

Nigel Farage — in the blunt, barnstorming style that could sweep him into power — has rightffully observed of Labour: if you think we should patrol our borders, then you are a racist,” presenting this as an attack on “countless millions” of ordinary voters.

Farage calls this crossing a “moral line,” an “absolute disgrace,” and he is right. It is an act of political desperation from a party that cannot defend its own failures, so instead paints its critics — and the public — as moral degenerates.

Like his cousin, American progressives, Starmer’s rhetoric is not only dishonest but dangerous. By border concern as some form of racial menace, Starmer risks inciting the radical left.

Instead of debating border security, Starmer attacks Farage personally — obsessively, according to Farage — as if the entire subject of immigration can be reduced to a vendetta against one man.

Farage’s substantive critique lands just as hard. Starmer boasts of strength while small boats continue to arrive. He talks of border control while legal migration remains historically high.

He says he believes in fairness while his government shows no appetite for rapid removals, offshore processing, or anything that looks remotely like deterrence.

Labour’s liberal stance toward long-settled migrants and mixed-heritage families reveals a worldview that sees borders as an inconvenience and national identity as a problem.

Whether one agrees or not, it is a critique rooted in a very real public sentiment: the fear that Britain’s political class no longer sees the nation as something to be protected, but something to be managed.

This is where the transatlantic contrast becomes almost painful. America has a President who reacts with decisive action. Britain has a Prime Minister who reacts to criticism by calling voters racist.

Trump understands that immigration is a national security policy. Starmer treats it as a communications challenge. Trump safeguards Americans. Starmer safeguards the political sensitivities of Labour’s activist fringe. Trump trusts ordinary people. Starmer despises and lectures them.

It should not be this way. Britain — the architect of modern democracy and constitutional liberty, the builder of the greatest empire in human history — should be leading the Western revival of sovereignty, not cowering from it.

Trump’s migration freeze is more than an administrative policy. It is a declaration that Western nations can — and must — put their people first. That borders matter. That security comes before sentiment. That national identity deserves protection.

America is blessed with a leader who understands this. Britain is saddled with one who does not.

Until Britain selects a leader, like Farage, willing to speak honestly, act decisively, and defend the country without apology, the grim contrast will remain: America has Trump. Britain has Starmer. One protects his nation. The other imperils his own.