Wanted: A Miracle Worker on Migration

Wanted: an “exceptional leader” with experience in policing, intelligence or the military, who is ready to tackle one of the thorniest issues in British politics.

Days after coming to power, Britain’s government is recruiting a chief for a new Border Security Command to “smash,” the job description says, the smuggling gangs that help asylum seekers arrive from France on small, often unseaworthy, boats.

The search for the border security commander is the first action taken by the new Labour government to address the unauthorized landings that have become an embarrassing symbol of Britain’s failure to control its borders.

Immigration is a divisive political topic across Europe and in Britain the issue of migrants arriving on small boats fueled gains in the general election last week by the anti-immigration party Reform U.K., led by Nigel Farage.

Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, has also scrapped an expensive plan championed by the government of his predecessor, Rishi Sunak, to send to Rwanda some of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have arrived on the southern English coast. Mr. Starmer described the plan — which was stalled by legal challenges that prevented anyone being put on a flight — as “dead and buried.”

That has intensified the focus on his strategy to confront a problem which his predecessors failed to tackle.