James Cleverly has said the “stop the boats” messaging was an error as it set an “unachievable target” to completely eliminate small boat crossings.

The former home secretary was asked at a Tory conference fringe event why he failed to stop small boats of migrants crossing the channel, and how effective his communication about the policy had been.

He said: “I think the phrase stop the boats was an error.

“It distilled a very, very complicated and challenging problem into a soundbite.

“The implication – not the implication, I suppose the self-imposed yardstick – was even one boat was a failure, and that was an unachievable target.”

He added: “One of my frustrations was that we failed to communicate our successes in the home office portfolio and, unsurprisingly therefore, everyone believed we had succeeded in nothing.”

Mr Cleverly was home secretary from November 2023 until the Tories’ election defeat in July this year.

Former prime minister Rishi Sunak said he would “stop the boats” as one of five key pledges for his premiership, on January 4 2023.

Mr Cleverly is running to replace Mr Sunak as Tory leader against Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat.