“There is a complex moral dimension to illegal immigration,” Rishi Sunak told Parliament on Tuesday, setting out how he plans to reduce the number of people turning up on our shores.

But if the morality is complicated, the politics is easier: Conservative MPs fear that the growing numbers of people crossing the Channel on small boats, helpfully filmed by Nigel Farage, are going to cost them a lot of votes. And so Sunak finds himself the latest prime minister to be promising to do Something Tough to stop people coming.

Here is a nothing that we’re doing

Like his predecessors, he couched this as being aimed at the people smugglers, not the smuggled. “It is not cruel or unkind to want to break the stranglehold of the criminal gangs who trade in human misery,” he said. If this were the government’s only concern, though, there would be a simple solution: allowing people to claim asylum in Calais. But of course it’s not simply that the government wants to stop people coming illegally. It wants to stop them coming at all.

Tonally, Sunak was more measured than the year’s other prime ministers. There was little bombast, though a cynic might say he has little to be bombastic about. Instead, his tone was sadness that he had to navigate these difficult waters.

Conservative MPs had turned out in force. On Monday, discussing strikes, the government benches were empty. On Tuesday, they were full, despite rail stoppages and snow. More than that, they were there in wholehearted support. I can’t remember the last time I saw them all so unambiguously behind their leader. It was an issue on which all of them wanted to say how much they agreed with Sunak’s plan, whatever it was.

This wasn’t so much because it was a radical new plan — it was mainly incremental measures each of which might make some difference — but because they’re desperate to be able to say the government is doing something.

This explains their enthusiasm, still much in evidence, for the expensive plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. The Rwanda flights are displacement activity. Not displacement of people, obviously, what with no one having been displaced, but of attention: they give Tories something to point to when constituents complain that nothing is being done about small boats. “But here is a nothing that we’re doing,” as they don’t quite put it.

The most surprising people can find themselves forced to flee their homes

Keir Starmer’s response was, essentially, to agree with Sunak, at least the bits where the prime minister had talked about what a mess things are at present. When it comes to answers, the Labour leader didn’t seem to have many more than the prime minister. It was, he said, a “serious problem requiring serious leadership”, which felt like a line left over from one of his speeches about Boris Johnson. “Where there should have been solutions we’ve had unworkable gimmicks,” he said. Perhaps Starmer has a stash of workable gimmicks on standby for the day he takes power.

But Labour’s heart isn’t really in this fight. Their benches were half-empty. Many Labour MPs would be more comfortable attacking the Tories as heartless for wanting to stop refugees, but that’s not the line Starmer is taking. He probably suspects that the Conservatives’ view is pretty close to a lot of voters’ instincts.

The problem for the government isn’t so much what it wants to achieve, but that it has so little prospect of achieving it. The first sign of trouble in paradise came when David Davis told Sunak that while he welcomed the plan to distribute refugees around the country in principle, it would obviously not be practical, for all sorts of sensible reasons, to put them anywhere near Haltemprice and Howden.

Kelly Tolhurst said the Home Office needed to listen to local councils about which locations were “appropriate and suitable”. If anywhere in the constituency of Rochester and Stroud meets those criteria, she didn’t mention it. Jonathan Gullis was delighted at the news that refugees would no longer be coming to Stoke-on-Trent. One senses disappointment down the tracks for some of these MPs.

On the softer Tory side, Tim Loughton wanted more detail on how refugees would be able to come to the UK legally. The prime minister was a little hazy on this point. Bob Neill said references to human rights law were a “red herring”, though Sunak seemed to be hinting that they might not be.

But for a day at least, the Conservatives were truly at one with their prime minister. It was a seasonal miracle as impressive as any delivered by Frank Capra or Richard Curtis. And as we contemplate it, it wouldn’t hurt to ponder how the Christmas story reminds us that the most surprising people can find themselves forced to flee their homes and seek shelter in foreign lands.