Stopping the boats (Part 1)

To date in 2025, over 25,000 illegal migrants have crossed the channel into Britain in small boats

Just a little over half-way through the year, and with the number of illegal immigrants crossing the channel in 2025 to date recently passing the 25,000 mark, we look set for a record number of crossings before the year is out. Despite Keir Starmer promising to get a grip on the problem in his pre-election promises, the situation has worsened notably under his leadership. The “smash the gangs” narrative was always unconvincing, lacking in any coherent strategy, and devoid of any kind of measurability by which the public could hold the government to account on progress.

Certainly, the lovely weather we have enjoyed this year has made crossings easier for the people smugglers, and contributed to the increase in numbers. But a year into power, should we not expect to be seeing at least SOME progress from the Home Office in getting control of this problem? I don’t think any reasonable person expected the issue to be solved overnight when Labour came to power, but at this stage it would be reasonable to expect to see the numbers starting to trend downwards if the smash the gangs policy was going to be effective.

A lot of people point the finger at France. We are paying them a lot of money to prevent the crossings, and many believe they are not fulfilling their end of the deal. Whilst this may be true, I actually don’t blame the French for this one. President Macron said himself during his recent trip to the UK, that the pull factors we offer are the main reason so many migrants are attracted to our shores. I don’t say this often, but I have some sympathy for the man.

Imagine being in charge of a country, and your neighbour has a policy that provides illegal immigrants with free hotel accommodation, meals, healthcare, access to benefits, a weekly cash allowance, a mobile phone, and all the other benefits and entitlements that we offer. Imagine too if the only way that illegal migrants could get to that country was to first travel through your country. If I’m honest, I don’t think I would be busting a gut to stop them from leaving out the other end once they had passed through my lands either.

This problem is of our own making, why should the French have to deal with the problem of tracking and removing these people? We have made our bed and now, as far as Macron is concerned we must lie in it. Why should it be his responsibility to solve British border issues? Should he be accepting our money when he has no intention of doing anything to prevent the boats from departing from his beaches?... No. But he is absolutely right that we have an obligation to do more to deter people from wanting to come here illegally in the first place.

And I doubt Mr. Macron has any more confidence in Starmer’s “smash the gangs” rhetoric than the British public do.

The problem with smashing the gangs is, like most things in life, it ignores the basic premise of supply and demand. As long as migrants have a desire to get into this country, then there will always be people willing to exploit that demand for their own gains. You can smash as many gangs as you like, but a new one will always spring up in their place, because where an opportunity exists criminals will look to profit from it.

That alone is sufficient to ensure that Starmer’s plan to end illegal channel crossings by going after the criminal gangs cannot alone deliver the required outcomes. But when you add in this government’s sheer incompetence, inability to come up with a tangible workable plan, and the lack of real desire to do what is necessary to fix the problem, then the policy was always doomed to fail.

The recipe for solving this issue is actually relatively simple. It just needs a leader with the resolve and political will to overrule the foreign courts and do what must be done. Australia managed to end small boat crossings in a matter of weeks when they decided to take the problem seriously. And since his inauguration, Trump has reduced illegal border crossings into the USA by 90%. Both of these examples prove that it can be done, if we really want to.

In our latest series, we outline the changes that we must make with immediate effect. By implementing these measures, I guarantee that the problem would stop almost instantly.

The measures that we will address in this series are:

1.      Remove all pull factors

2.      Detain on arrival and end the use of hotels

3.      Incarcerate anyone arriving here illegally

4.      Permanently remove the right to claim asylum

5.      Offshore processing

6.      Deportation

In this first part of the series, we will talk about the first change that we must make with immediate effect, and that is to REMOVE ALL PULL FACTORS.

Our woke political class have to take some responsibility for their contribution towards the rapid escalation in the number of small boat crossings in recent years. Instead of punishing illegal entry into our country in the way that committing a criminal offence should be punished, we have instead chosen to offer an almost endless list of free benefits and comforts to illegal immigrants.

If you manage to get even part way across the channel, British authorities will escort you the rest of the way, transport you to a 3* or 4* hotel, where you will be provided with indefinite free room and board. We will also give you a mobile phone through which you can maintain contact with the people smugglers who brought you here, and co-ordinate your entry into the black-market economy. FYI Deliveroo and Uber Eats offer a very easy entry into the gig economy for you, with no ID required. We will give you access to our taxpayer-funded healthcare system, despite the fact that you have never contributed a penny towards its upkeep, whilst our own citizens sit on waiting lists for months or even years for treatment that they have spent decades paying for through their taxes.

Your children will be provided with free state-funded education. Although invariably the immediate risk to life of living within the bombed-out war zone from which you have almost certainly fled means you have probably made the completely justified decision to leave them behind. But if you have bothered to bring them with you, this again will happily be funded by the ever-generous British taxpayer, whose own children suffer the negative effects of ever-swelling classroom sizes.

We will give you £50 a week to spend on whatever you choose (our High Streets have a plethora of gambling establishments for you to fritter away your taxpayer funded allowance, if you please). We will also provide free legal assistance in your bid to claim asylum in this country. And if your claim is rejected, we will pay an unlimited sum towards your legal fees for repeated appeals.

Except of course, whilst we hand all of this to you gratis, none of it is actually free. It is ALL paid for by the British taxpayer.

This must stop now. Of all the countries in which economic migrants from Afghanistan, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan and Syria, to name but a few, could choose to seek a new life, none offer the wealth of benefits and first-class treatment that we do. Most will throw you in jail the second you set foot on their shores illegally. Is it any wonder then that the thousands of people every year who make the journey from their homelands choose the UK as their destination of choice? They choose to pass through a multitude of safe countries, in any of which they could claim asylum. But they don’t because they know the UK is where they can most easily sponge off the state without challenge or recourse.

It is these very “pull factors” that President Macron alluded to in his recent state visit to the UK. They are the reason that his countrymen are forced to put up with a tidal wave of undocumented illegals flooding through their country en-route to the UK, and why he is so reticent in his efforts to stop them continuing their onward journey. The pull factors we offer are the root cause of this whole issue. They must be removed in their entirety.

When we talk about breaking the model of supply and demand, the demand is very much created by these pull factors. Take them away, and immediately the appeal of the UK as a target destination for illegal immigrants dwindles. Suddenly, the balance between risk and reward would be altered significantly. The thousands of pounds that the people smugglers charge to get you here, coupled with the dangers of crossing the channel in small boats, would seem less justified if the rewards on the other side were much restricted.

We must end the use of hotels and private rented accommodation to house illegal immigrants (an alternative accommodation proposal will be put forward in part 2 of this series). No-one arriving here illegally should have any right to utilize our healthcare service, nor our education system. These structures cost billions of pounds to fund, and should be exclusively the right of the British taxpayer who pay for them. No free money, no free mobile phones with which you can make contact with underground criminal networks.

And we will also not fund your asylum claims, or legal challenges that you wish to make against rejected claims. If you have the money to pay thousands of pounds to people traffickers, then you can fund your own legal challenge, not the British taxpayer.

Make these changes and we will take a huge stride towards curtailing the number of illegal channel crossings.

It is not the people trafficking gangs that we should be smashing… it is the features of the supply and demand model that provides them with the economic opportunity to exploit migrants and our asylum system.

UP NEXT: Part 2: Detain on arrival and end the use of hotels