Keir Starmer and Labour are being unrealistic about sealing Britain’s borders

Keir Starmer’s latest slogan is punchy: “Our schools are shut and our borders are open.” But this is pure opportunism. Labour agrees with the schools being shut, and the party’s criticism of Boris Johnson on airport hotel quarantine, that he should be going faster and further, is mere opposition by numbers. 

It is an easy line of attack for the opposition to complain that the government is too slow – the hotel rooms won’t be ready for another 10 days – and that it ought to be quarantining arrivals from all countries, not just those on the “red list”. It sounds good and opinion polls suggest that the voters agree with sentiments as simple as closing our borders completely and doing it yesterday. 

“Too little, too late,” is an easy line that will get people nodding along in focus groups. And of course, preparations for quarantining should have started earlier, so that the government would be in a position to be able to act quickly when it needed to, but sealing our borders is neither possible nor desirable.