Inflatable dinghies and outboard engines believed to have been used by migrants to cross the channel and stored in a Port Authority yard in Dover, England, on August 17, 2025.
Ben Stansall / AFP
Reform UK jokes that migration goes up “every time the home secretary announces a new policy.”
It has almost been a month since Britain’s migration deal with France ‘came into effect,’ yet still not a single migrant has been returned.
The scheme is supposed to see ‘small boat’ migrants with inadmissible asylum claims in the UK returned to France, in exchange for the same number of reportedly legal migrants sent the other way—making it fairly future in the first place. But in the time since it ‘began,’ more than 3,500 migrants have arrived in the UK by crossing the Channel.
Radio presenter Mike Graham joked that this was “another Labour triumph.” Reform UK MP Lee Anderson also jibed:
Every time the home secretary announces a new policy on illegal migration, illegal migration actually goes up. I think a period of silence would be most welcome from the home secretary.
He added that “the only way to stop the pull factor is to detain, deport and never allow these illegal migrants to claim asylum in this country.”
Another Question To The Home Secretary.
I will not stop asking the questions the British Public want answered.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said for her part that she expects deportations to begin “later this month.” Although she would not tell Parliament on Monday how many migrants would be in the first tranche of those removed.
Tory Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp later told the Daily Mail that Labour is “too weak to do what’s needed to fix this.” True, but then his own party has much to answer for on this and many other issues, too.
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_.
