ConservativeHome’s Editor sat down with shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp in Manchester during the party Conference

Talk to any number of previous Home Secretaries, Labour or Conservative, and they’ll privately describe their former department in the same slightly crude fashion.

“It’s the Department of ‘shit happens’.”

They don’t mean it in a way that implies a shrug, and move on. No, It’s literally the department where real life, consequential, challenging, life or death, safety or disaster happens. And Jack Straw followed it up with “….usually out of a clear blue sky”

Having worked there myself, it’s completely accurate. At any time of most days an official will ask if they can bring you up to speed on something and you know in an instant it’s something you’d rather hadn’t happened.

One of the frustrating things about the whole “you had fourteen years” attack, is that I know many of the Home Office ministers I worked with really did want to tackle immigration, both legal and illegal, and we did, putting in place measures on top of those begun by Suella Braverman that have significantly reduced numbers.

But they are still too high, and Labour as usual have tried to claim the credit for the drop.

Chris Philip, like Robert Jenrick, both Home Office ministers long ago wanted to leave the ECHR to tackle removals of channel migrants, and on the eve of this years’ Conference the Party adopted that as their policy.

I caught up with the Shadow Home Secretary in Manchester, and having put the ‘fourteen years’ conundrum to him he quite reasonably pointed out “well I wasn’t Prime Minister or Home Secretary” and reminds me of his advocacy for leaving the ECHR back before it was even on the table.

We both know however that it won’t be the ‘silver bullet’ solution as there isn’t one. You will only ‘stop the boats’ with a range of measures that work together and Labour’s aren’t working, and Reform’s ‘send in the Navy’ won’t work.

No party going into the next election will even pass the ‘sniff test’ if it doesn’t offer a policy solution to the boats crossing the channel, to reducing legal migration numbers, and Philp, ever energetic, thinks the Conservatives have done the hard thinking, and the learning from mistakes, that has resulted in a strong policy offer.

We are going to need one. With a remarkable knack he has for remembering figures, he reeled off some startling statistics.

15,127 illegal immigrants have crossed since Labour announced their EU one in one out deal. Once operational, as of ten days ago 26 people have been returned to France and the UK has taken 18, whilst 14, 386 people have crossed illegally.

Just over a thousand arrived during Labour Conference alone.

The ‘thousands in – few out’ deal has not remotely replaced the Rwanda scheme as a deterrent, something that both of us felt would work but Labour scrapped on day one.

Philp warms to the theme:

“We certainly do bring Rwanda back. The only way you can stop these boats is with a removals deterrent, so anyone crossing the Channel illegally knows they are near certain to be rapidly, within a week, removed from this country, and because you know you’re going to be removed you’re not going to bother making the crossing in the first place.

Australia successfully did this 12 years ago; I discussed this with former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. The United States of America have done it this year. The second Trump administration has reduced illegal migration across the US Mexican border by 80 or 90 per cent within just a couple of months by having a removal deterrent, which I discussed with US Vice President JD Vance.

So we know this works, and our policy is to ensure that within a week of arrival, every illegal immigrant is removed, either back to their country of origin, if safe and possible, or to a third country, like Rwanda. In order to facilitate it here, you need to get rid of the ECHR, which would otherwise be used to prevent it, as it was used to delay and prevent Rwanda.

We’re going to get far more countries to take back their own nationals quickly by using visa sanctions so that if they don’t take back their own nationals, we’ll stop issuing visas to people wanting to come in the other direction, and will withdraw foreign aid and will slap tariffs on them if necessary.

And we’ll do deals with countries like Rwanda, ironically, as we speak, the United States is sending some people to Rwanda who they can’t return to their country of origin. So the United States have stepped in to the space we left in Rwanda.

Keir Starmer has gone in the opposite direction, and illegal channel crossings have skyrocketed since the election and this year, so far, has been the worst in history for illegal immigration over the channel”

In 2025 36,244 people have crossed the Channel over ten thousand higher than the previous peak in 2023.

This morning the Daily Mail reports that the Conservatives have got some backing on this issue from a rather unlikely source; one Tony Blair.

Pointing out Labour’s huge failure in this area, and the shallowness of their “smash the gangs” gimmick – work that as Policing Minister Philp was only too well aware we were doing ourselves in Government – is perhaps too easy. So I turn to Reform.

“Right, but Chris, we both know Reform attack us relentlessly over migration numbers, the ‘Boriswave’ and at the same time some voters say the Tories are pitching a Reform lite agenda?”

He doesn’t hesitate to take this on. Philp always gets very focussed and direct when he answers questions.

“Look, recent levels of immigration over the last few years have, just to be completely honest, have been far, far too high. That was wrong. That was a mistake.

We have listened, and we’ve changed, and one of the ways we can demonstrate that change is by coming up with a solution to fixing it, and the solution is to say the people that have come here recently, supposedly to work, but who don’t work, or who work on low wages will not get Indefinite Leave to Remain, and instead they will have to leave.

Reform copied it, but made changes which made them essentially fall over. They pushed it, I think, too far by saying people have been here for 20 years and at ILR and are making a contribution, might get kicked out of the country, and that actually polls extremely badly, as well as being, I think, wrong in principle.

They announce slogans without having done the proper thinking, and what they announce falls apart rapidly. We saw this a couple of weeks ago when Nigel Farage completely fell over as to whether his policy would or would not include European settled status people – and the fact that you can’t even answer basic questions like that just kind of should signal to the public that they’re not really a serious party, good slogans, yes, charismatic leader, sure.

Credible policies that can deliver? I don’t think so.”

It’s been a busy couple of weeks since we met up. Home Affairs, as I have mentioned, is never a quiet brief. Philp has been involved in questioning the Government’s handling of the China espionage case, the proposed new China Embassy, and why Israeli football fans have been banned from Aston Villa, apparently on safety grounds but in a decision that looks more political than practical.

Which raises an interesting point.

Starmer likes process, and others to make critical decisions he can then opine on. Philp is more politically minded by instinct, and in his brief is bringing that to the fore. Robert Jenrick has been doing similar as Shadow Justice Secretary, the other half of the old Home Office before it was split up.

The Home Office is often described as ‘not fit for purpose’, it gets a bad press sometimes because almost all public interaction with it, and the organisations it oversees are negative. You are either a criminal or a victim of crime, someone who wants to come in, or someone we wish to remove.

About the only thing it covers that people actually appreciate is rapidity in sorting your passport. Oddly enough many civil servants choose the Home Office because it is so challenging.

Reform’s old idea of replacing them all with people that support their policies, will remove vital expertise, and talent. The idea they are all woke and ineffective is actually a myth. However if the Conservatives ever return to power, the politics is going to have to push back on some of the institutional mind set. Yes, these things are difficult to do, but do them we must, rather than waste time arguing about how hard it is.

There is something about Philp’s restless energy levels that suggests were he to get into the hot seat he’d be putting the pedal down hard, and not stop. The issue is can the Tories get into a position where he even gets to try.

“We need to be better than shooting from the hip with good slogans, but basically in the pub on the back of a fag packet, stuff that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. We need to be better than that. We need to show we’re credible and serious, and when we make announcements, they do stand up to scrutiny. Because we’ve taken the time to think through our positions it means the public can have confidence in what we’re doing.

I know the last year has been uncomfortable in many ways, but this has been a Conference of renewal, and we now have a spring in our step, and I hope, optimism about the future”

Well that’s the question everyone was asking in Manchester.

Conservatives see the argument, they like what they heard, but is it enough?

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