Another week, another set of figures giving the lie to Labour’s claim it is getting a grip of illegal Channel crossings. It points to rapid demographic change of the sort that British voters have rejected at the polls for at least the past 15 years.
Over 500 migrants made the dangerous journey from France to the UK on two consecutive days this week: Tuesday (525) and Wednesday (614), according to official data. There were an average of 63 migrants on each of the small boats, while a further 211 illegals—increasingly referred to as ‘irregular’ migrants in the official jargon—crossed in just four boats on Thursday.
The Home Office—which has given up on even labelling these crossings correctly as “illegal”—insisted on Thursday, August 29th, that the recent conviction of one people smuggler is “sending a clear message that we will not tolerate this sort of life-threatening activity.” But it appears as though no one is listening.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage splashed on The Daily Express on the same day, complaining that there had been “not a word from our prime minister” about the Channel crisis.
Not only are we through 20,000 crossings for the year, we are now ahead of 2023. There is no end to this. On Channel migrants, Starmer will fail.
Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, later added that “smuggling gangs [are] laughing at [home secretary] Yvette Cooper [and] Keir Starmer’s pathetic cry: ‘Smash the gangs.’”
The failure to take control extends to legal migration, too, as highlighted by a new report from the Centre for Migration Control think tank today. This reveals that over 1.6 million migrants in Britain are not working—a record high, costing the taxpayer “at least” £8.5 billion (€10.11bn) a year.
Robert Bates, who is research director at the think tank, said that “for all the talk of a fiscal ‘black hole,’ the Labour government seem to be missing the glaringly obvious fact that mass migration is causing economic pandemonium.”
There is no reason for us to continue handing out so many long-term visas when we are currently having to bail out over a million migrants who are already in Britain but not working.
This is the very definition of a Ponzi scheme, and we will only compound the problem if we do not change course soon.
