Migrants wade into the sea to try to board smugglers’ boats in an attempt to cross the English Channel off the beach of Gravelines in northern France on September 27, 2025.
SAMEER AL-DOUMY / AFP
The patrols cost the British taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds, yet tens of thousands of migrants crossed the Channel last year alone.
Last year’s talks between London and Paris officials on stopping illegal Channel migration were clearly right to have been dismissed as “more smoke and empty words,” since reports now say French border forces have failed to stop two-thirds of crossings.
As well as talk, Britain has given more than £700 million (€800 million) to France to bolster patrols. Yet officials let more than 41,000 migrants leave their shores for the UK in 2025 alone, preventing just 35%—that is, around 22,500—of those who tried to make the (often deadly) crossing.
With a three-year agreement running out in March, Britain’s Sun newspaper has stressed that “under no circumstances should Labour even think about signing any new ‘deal’” with the French government, which allows its border forces to “watch idly” as migrants pass them by, adding:
It would be far better instead to focus on ending the incentives for migrants to come here in the first place.
Indeed, Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood herself admitted in November that the UK is attractive to migrants because of its “excessive generosity and [the] ease of remaining.”
The government’s laughably titled ‘one-in, one-out’ migrant deal with France has done absolutely nothing to alter this impression. Just 281 migrants had been returned to France under the scheme as of the end of January, out of the thousands upon thousands who have arrived in Britain—fewer than was previously believed due to what Mahmood described as an “operational complication on the French side.”
Former Conservative Immigration Minister Kevin Foster—whose own party has been consistently useless on the issue of immigration—also on Wednesday told GB News that Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s team should “not pay them [the French] any more” unless a “genuine deterrent” is in place, which is unlikely.
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_.
