The Tories, it is fair to say, need a break. As their annual conference begins in Manchester, they have been struggling for the oxygen of public attention. Nigel Farage has dominated the headlines thanks to the announcement that if elected he would scrap Indefinite Leave to Remain, as well as Keir Starmer’s description of the Reform UK leader’s policy as “racist” in response.

How, then, might the Conservatives get their ideas back to the top of the agenda? To solve this problem, the party has announced a bold new immigration policy, planning to establish a “removals force” aimed at detaining and deporting 150,000 people each year as part of a wider strategy to address illegal immigration in the UK. Inspired by what the Tory Party terms the “successful approach” of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, the proposed force would be granted “extensive new powers” and receive £1.6 billion in annual funding.

As an attempt to deal with immigration, this policy has significant flaws. When questioned by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg about where the migrants being removed would be sent, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch responded: “I’m tired of all these irrelevant questions about where they should go. They will return to where they’re meant to be, or to another country — but they should not be here.” Given the failure of previous deportation attempts via the enormously costly Rwanda scheme, it is unlikely that the question of where a Tory government would send illegal immigrants will be seen as “irrelevant”.

The funding settlement is also questionable, as the increase from the existing £820 million will supposedly come from the closure of asylum hotels and “tackling the wider costs of our out-of-control asylum system”. The new scheme is likely to result in a reduction in Channel crossings, but this is a difficult cost to estimate; and without pouring significant money into asylum processing capacity, closing asylum hotels could result in at best marginal savings achieved by simply moving migrants elsewhere.

As an attempt to capture public attention, Badenoch’s pledge falls short, too. This is largely because it has come weeks after Reform’s ILR announcement, which dominated the news cycle and effectively set the tone of the debate. Trailing in its wake, the Conservatives’ proposal feels not only belated but reactive.

The unfortunate truth for the Tories is that what might have been a headline-grabbing policy six weeks ago now reads as a breathless attempt to outdo something that’s already been said — by a party which might actually win power at the next election. This underlines a larger, uncomfortable reality: the Conservatives are no longer the unquestioned standard-bearers of the Right in British politics. The fact that they are now following Reform, rather than setting the agenda themselves, signals a profound shift in political life.

It’s not as though the party lacked the groundwork to make this announcement before now. Much of this policy was effectively sketched out months ago by the networks of think tanks and policy experts from whom the Tories habitually draw their policies. Even Badenoch’s newly-announced policy to block future Tory candidates who do not back leaving the European Convention on Human Rights is a second-hand idea, having been suggested by her colleague Robert Jenrick last month. Given the depth of thinking that has gone into fixing Britain’s immigration system — the collapse of which the public rightly blames on the Conservatives — there was no justification for such delay, only a failure to act decisively.

Beating Reform on immigration isn’t impossible, but it does at least require the Tories to land the first punch and attempt to set the debate, rather than offering what appears to be little more than mimicry. The Conservatives’ best hope now lies in going marginally harder and earlier on migration policy, and leaning into areas where Reform has not yet established credibility such as economics. The problem is that Farage may simply land too many punches too early to allow Badenoch into the fight at all.

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Tom Jones writes at The Potemkin Village Idiot.

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