Migrants picked up at sea attempting to cross the English Channel from France, disembark from Border Force vessel ‘Typhoon’ after it arrived at the Marina in Dover
Photo by Ben STANSALL / AFP
Gangs mock Britain’s ‘smash the gangs’ pledge as migrant numbers soar.
People smugglers are laughing at the British Labour government’s pledge to ‘smash the gangs’ and are hoping for a particularly busy summer of Channel crossings thanks to special ‘season’ discounts.
Migrants will be able to pay thousands of pounds less to get from France to the UK via a small boat, reports said this week. So far this year, the number of crossings has already passed 10,000—and at the earliest point of the year since records began—which doesn’t bode well for daily figures during the summer.
Smugglers have also offered discounted prices—ranging from between £1,000 and £2,000 (€1,180-€2,360) as opposed to prices as high as £6,000 (€7,070)—to migrants willing to feature in promotional footage shared on social media. Crossings have been advertised this way on sites like TikTok and Instagram for years.
After one account advertised crossing arrangements for £1,500 (€1,770) in late March, a number of social media users responded asking for the phone numbers of smugglers.
This, of course, offers another route of distraction for officials, who busy themselves playing whack-a-mole with social media accounts rather than deterring future crossings by pursuing removals of illegal migrants. All the while, the British taxpayer pays £3,172 (€3,740) every day to house migrants in hotels.
Labour MP Nadia Whittome also said after the recent local elections—in which Nigel Farage’s Reform UK took another important step towards its goal of national governance—that “going tough on immigration isn’t working.” If, as Whittome’s comment suggests, Labour thinks it has been working hard to stop illegal migration, it is hard to imagine how much worse the situation will get when the party takes a (further) step back.
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
