The UK Coast Guard and Border Force have been involved in “multiple incidents” of human smuggler boats crossing the English Channel to Britain on Thursday morning as French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer claim to be making a breakthrough on border control.
Potentially hundreds of illegal migrants have already crossed Britain’s southern border today, observers state, with “multiple incidents” recorded, and just one smuggler boat witnessed by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage carrying at least 70 people.
The fresh arrivals, just the latest in an already record year of human trafficking to the United Kingdom over the English Channel, give all appearance of making a mockery of the meeting of the leaders of Britain and France at Downing Street for last-minute talks on what they say will be a pivotal deal to control border crossings.
His Majesty’s Coast Guard said in a statement on Thursday: “HM Coastguard has been coordinating a response to multiple incidents involving small boats in the Channel this morning… UK Border Force vessels have been sent as part of this response”. The UK government publishes daily numbers for migrants brought ashore but these typically lag a day behind and, at the time of publication, no number had been given.
Some 21,000 boat migrants are known to have crossed to the United Kingdom so far this year, a faster rate of arrivals than any other Channel migrant crisis year to date, and putting this year on track to be the busiest yet.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, a keen fisherman, was again in the English Channel on Thursday, observing the crossing of smuggler boats shepherded by French government vessels, including the navy, before handing them off to UK government boats. Far from signing a new deal with France, Farage said, the Prime Minister should be demanding a refund from France for the hundreds of millions paid for them to protect their own northern border.
Yet — as Farage acknowledged — the British government was essentially setting France up to fail with these agreements and payments, given the pull-factors for migrants to come to the UK are so strong. Functionally no migrants are ever deported after coming by boat — just three per cent — and Britain’s thriving black-market economy presents boat arrivals with opportunity for gain, even while they live in taxpayer-funded hotels.
Mr Farage said, reports GB News: “we’ve got to be honest about this, we can be upset with the French, but it’s our fault… you might as well have a sign on the White Cliffs of Dover which says ‘everyone welcome’. No one gets deported, and I think we have to go further than we’ve ever gone before.”
He said: “We cannot have people coming in and within a couple of days, walking our streets, working for Deliveroo or whatever else.”
Meanwhile, Starmer and Macron speak at Downing Street. The exact nature of the deal has yet to be revealed, but early reports citing insiders suggest as few as 50 migrants a week may be returned to France, a tiny fraction of arrivals on a Summer’s day. Further, the deal may be on a strictly one-in-one-out basis, meaning no reduction in overall numbers, simply trading of migrants across the water.
Speaking before the private talks began on Thursday morning, France’s President Macron said Britain and France had “common resolve” to deal with smuggling gangs, but said ultimately the solution had to be European. Because the migrants crossing the English Channel originally entered Europe from the South, crossing the Mediterranean to Spain or Italy, or coming up the Balkans from Turkey or Syria through Greece, those borders had to be controlled.
The decade-long Europe Migrant Crisis suggests such ideas as simply closing the southern border to arrivals are easier said than done for a political bloc commanded by human rights law and utterly defeated by smugglers and open-borders activists both.
This story is developing, more follows
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