Britain’s Conservative government is treating the latest statistics for illegal small-boat crossings as a victory, despite it being the second highest total since records began in 2018.
The provisional recorded number of individuals completing Channel crossings in 2023 is 29,437—down by almost a third from the 2022 figure of 45,774. Yet this figure remains upwards of 29,000 more than the 299 people detected making the journey in 2018.
In the face of these figures, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who listed “stop the boats” as one of his “five priorities” for 2023, has been criticised by his own MPs. Tory Tom Hunt said:
It isn’t enough. The numbers and the costs associated with this crisis are still completely unacceptable and we need to make far more progress.
He added, however, that “it would be churlish to say this [one-year decrease] isn’t progress.”
Migration officials painted a rather different picture. Sources suggest that the number has dropped due to factors beyond government action. No migrants crossed the Channel over Christmas for the first time since records began but, as The Daily Telegraph pointed out, “this was as much a function of bad weather in the Channel as the success of any specific policy.”
Home Secretary James Cleverly failed to mention this when celebrating the news on Wednesday, although Twitter’s Community Notes said his “post is missleading [sic]. Even the governments [sic] own website confirms there are seasonal effects on boat crossings due to adverse weather. This winter is unusually stormy!”
The Immigration Services Union, which represents Border Force officers, also described the fall as a “glitch.” Lucy Moreton, its ‘professional officer,’ told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
There have been other confounding factors—we have had particularly high winds, we have had a larger number of days where it is less likely that we are going to get migrants in boats. But we have also had much larger boats, much more seaworthy boats, so the planning assumption is that this is a glitch.
Moreton added that because of this, and if all else remains the same, Britain will “certainly” take in more illegal migrants next year than it did in 2023. Passing off the weather as a successful policy shows Sunak and Cleverly running out of ideas.
