Andy Burnham is a B-list Tik-Tokker providing migrants with free pass into UK

Illegal immigration is one of the biggest issues facing the country, even more so if you’ve got an immigrant hotel in your area or have a home of multiple occupation (HMO) opening down your street. But not according to Andy Burnham, who’s done everything to avoid the subject since becoming Prime Minister – even preferring to discuss pork scratchings and whether baps are called barms on TikTok, God help us, than to tackle immigration.

But after 752 illegal immigrants arrived in nine boats last Wednesday alone – the highest number of arrivals in a single day this year, breaking the record set the month before of 710 arrivals – Burnham won’t be able to run away from the issue any longer, especially now his beloved EU, led by Italy, is looking to take a tougher stance after the 60,000 immigrant invasion of the Spanish territory of Ceuta.

Italy immediately introduced border checks for people travelling from Spain by air or sea, suspending the Schengen free movement rules. And 22 Schengen members have written an open letter to Brussels demanding an urgent meeting on the immigration emergency.

Germany is taking a tough line too after a spate of Islamic attacks – the latest at Berlin’s Pride Festival last month – and along with Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands, is looking to find third countries to process their immigrants offshore and follow the lead of Italy, which has struck a deal with Albania. Of course, the UK actually pioneered this approach by agreeing to a deal with Rwanda under Rishi Sunak and the last Conservative Government, but Labour stupidly revoked it on their very first day in office.

So, while parties on the political right in the UK – the Conservatives, Reform and Restore – have pledged to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, to revoke Tony Blair’s Human Rights Act and to update the refugee convention in order to tackle illegal immigration, Labour first under Keir Starmer and now under Burnham, and those parties on the political left, refuse to countenance any of those measures, or any others for that matter.

The Human Rights legal duo of Starmer and Lord Hermer might have thankfully left the Government, but their ideology runs deep in the DNA of the Labour Party, and open borders is a significant part of that. Burnham doesn’t want to talk about immigration because he has no problem with it, and the only realistic, effective response to detention and deportation of illegal immigrants isn’t something he would contemplate.

Indeed, he is already looking to water down his Home Secretary’s tougher stance of a 10-year requirement to qualify for Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK. He and his backbenchers are still pushing for a youth free-movement scheme with Europe, for safer routes into the UK, and to get the immigration backlog down by fast-tracking an approval for everyone, providing a free pass into the UK.

Andy Burnham might find out sooner than he thinks that the public wants a PM who will sort out illegal immigration once and for all, not a B-list celebrity Tik-Tokker telling us banalities.