More small boat arrivals under Starmer than Sunak, despite ex-PM being in power seven months longer
The total number of people who have arrived under Sir Keir's time in government has now reached 50,716 - equivalent to 126 per day, surpassing the total of 50,637 (82 per day) that arrived under his predecessor.
If the current rate is sustained, by the end of 2025 more migrants will have crossed the Channel under Sir Keir than the number that did under Boris Johnson, despite Mr Johnson having been prime minister for more than three years.
Mr Johnson's premiership coincided with the COVID pandemic, when the number of people arriving in the UK was low for a sustained period while lockdowns were in place in both the UK and Europe.
2:40
Talking about the weather
The Home Office has pointed out that Labour took office in summer, when good weather tends to boost the number of Channel crossings. That is true, although the number of arrivals in a rolling 12-month period has also been steadily rising and now sits just short of the all-time record.
A total of 45,823 people have arrived in the past 365 days, the highest total since April 2023.
It was 46,870 when Rishi Sunak took office at the end of October 2022, following very high numbers of arrivals during the last months of Mr Johnson's tenure that continued through the short reign of Liz Truss. Within five days it reached 48,670, which is still the record.
By the time Mr Sunak handed over to Sir Keir, it had fallen by more than a third, to 31,578. It has risen by 45% since then.
Analysing the number of crossings over a full year means each period is equal in terms of the seasons it represents, but not necessarily the weather. The Home Office says that this winter was unusually sunny and lacking in wind, which has contributed to the record number of arrivals so far in 2025.
That is true, but previous analysis by the Sky News Data x Forensics team found the high number of small boat arrivals under Labour cannot just be blamed on this. More migrants were also crossing on days when weather conditions were more challenging.
This week, the first migrants were detained under a new "one-in one-out" deal agreed with France. Under the pilot scheme, the UK can exchange a migrant who arrived illegally for one who has not tried to cross and can pass security and eligibility checks. Numbers are limited and are thought to be up to 50 a week.
The government hopes this will act as a deterrent.
But our analysis found 50 people a week is less than 5% of the average number of weekly arrivals, and less than 0.3% of total net migration to the UK.
The Data and Forensics
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
20 minutes ago
- The Independent
Robert Jenrick claims migrants threw bottles at him during France camp visit
Robert Jenrick said that he had bottles thrown at him during a visit to a migrant camp near Calais. The former Tory leadership hopeful posted footage of himself spotting a group of what he said was '60 or 70 migrants holding life jackets' at around 8:30pm on Sunday, 11 August. He said the group boarded a bus without tickets and was filmed following the bus to Dunkirk with his team. Mr Jenrick said there was no sign of the group by 4am, and called police to report that he had seen "a large group of maybe 40 or 50 illegal migrants in the cemetery off the main road by the beach.' Mr Jenrick added: "We've given £800 million to France and we didn't see a police officer the whole day, and now we just phoned them and it doesn't sound like they'll even bother to come out.'
Reuters
21 minutes ago
- Reuters
Countries race for late breakthrough in deadlocked plastic pollution talks
GENEVA, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Talks to create the world's first legally binding treaty to tackle plastic pollution are at risk of ending without a deal as countries race to find a potential compromise on the final day of negotiations in Geneva. Talks headed into their final hours on Thursday after countries who want an ambitious plastics treaty threw out the text proposed on Wednesday. States pushing for a comprehensive treaty, including Panama, Kenya, France and Britain, shared frustration that key articles on the full life cycle of plastic pollution from the production of polymers to the disposal of waste, as well as the harm to health, had been removed entirely from the text. Oil-producing nations are against curbs on the production of virgin plastics derived from petroleum, coal, and gas, while others want it to be limited and to have stricter controls over plastic products and hazardous chemicals. "It's proving unlikely all countries will be able to bridge their differences," said Zaynab Sadan of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), adding that agreement was as far away as it had ever been in nearly three years of talks. Panama described the new draft text as "repulsive" and called for a complete rewrite. Saudi Arabia, which is resisting major curbs, said nothing could be agreed until the treaty's scope is clearly defined. More than 1,000 delegates have gathered in Geneva for the sixth round of talks, after a meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) in South Korea late last year ended without a deal. The OECD warns that without intervention, plastic production will triple by 2060, further choking oceans, harming health, and exacerbating climate change. "It will be very important to spend every single hour of the last day of negotiation finding a good text that can deliver on the promise to end plastic pollution," said Giulia Carlini, a Senior Attorney for the Environmental Health Program of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment Andreas Bjelland Eriksen, co-chair of the High Ambition Countries group, told Reuters that all parties need to compromise. "We are willing to discuss all articles, three, six, for example, to be able to create the package that can be good enough for everyone," he said, pointing to potential openness to re-discussing restrictions on chemicals and production. "We're optimistic ... We think this can be really good for our industry, society, and for the environment," Ross Eisenberg, president of America's Plastic Makers, which is part of the American Chemistry Council, told Reuters. The Council, which supports a deal without limits on plastic production, warned that the U.S. might not ratify a treaty containing provisions to ban chemicals or restrict plastic production. However, Colombian lawmaker Juan Carlos Loazada urged that no deal would be better than a watered down deal. Some 300 businesses, including Unilever (ULVR.L), opens new tab, have pressed for an ambitious treaty that harmonizes rules globally. "If we don't get that degree of harmonization, we risk further fragmentation ... and higher costs," Ed Shepherd, Senior Global Sustainability Manager at Unilever, told Reuters.
Times
37 minutes ago
- Times
Giorgia Meloni rejects ‘unpatriotic' claim Italians are deserting beaches
As Italian politics ground to its customary mid-August halt this week and ministers vanished to the beach, the prime minister Giorgia Meloni was reported to be heading for Greece — yet evidently still ready for a row with the opposition. The topic was holidays, as Meloni angrily accused her opposition rival, Elly Schlein, of making unpatriotic allegations about Italians deserting the country's beaches because they are broke after three years of her premiership. The row began when Schlein, the leader of Italy's centre-left Democratic Party, seized on reports that the number of tourists renting umbrellas and sunbeds at Italian beach clubs have dropped by up to 30 per cent this year. 'Empty beaches are a postcard from the Meloni government — millions of Italians are not taking holidays because they can't afford it,' said Schlein. Images of happy holidaymakers on Italy's state TV channels were propaganda put out by Meloni-appointed managers to conceal the reality of a fading economy, she added. Meloni shot back with her own statistics showing that the overall number of Italians taking holidays in Italy in July was not down, but up by 1.8 per cent year-on-year. She accused Schlein of an unpatriotic attempt to sully the reputation of tourism in Italy in the eyes of the world. 'I consider it shameful that certain opposition figures spread fake news, damaging the image and the interests of Italy just to attack the government,' she posted. 'Who truly loves our nation should not discredit it before the world for political gain. We will work to make [Italy] stronger, more attractive and more proud of itself every day,' she added. Antonio Misiani, a senator with the Democratic Party, likened Meloni's attack to that of a North Korean politician, while the former prime minister Matteo Renzi pointed out Meloni was a fine one to talk about patriotism since she was reported to be sunbathing somewhere in Greece, rather than on an Italian beach. Support for Schlein came from Massimo Casanova, a former MEP with the right-wing League party and a beach club owner, who said empty beaches were due Italy's middle class running out of cash. 'The government should be helping Italians, not starving them,' he said. Meloni's claim that overall tourism numbers are up has been borne out in Rome, where 644,000 visitors are expected to arrive over the mid-August weekend, up 5.5 percent on last year, despite temperatures edging towards 40C. However, hotel owners say holidaymakers may be taking shorter trips this year, and the rosy statistics may have been inflated by thousands of previously unregistered B&Bs publishing their figures for the first time. Other reasons why beach clubs have fewer customers have little to do with the economy. Outrage has grown this month regarding price increases by the clubs, which are allowed to fence off wide swathes of sand and charge people to sit on it. Anger has focused on a club in Mondello, near Palermo in Sicily, that installed turnstiles at the entrance to the beach, despite the law permitting visitors to enter free of charge if they stay close to the water's edge and do not occupy one of the sunbeds set up by the club. • Europe's secret (and more affordable) beach clubs Experts have said that the traditional Italian habit of cramming into beach clubs in August is also changing as people avoid the growing heat and take breaks either side of summer. Beach clubs became part of Italian summer culture during the country's post-war boom years, but Gen Z Italians appear to be less inclined to pay to lie in rows under tightly packed umbrellas. As the Sardinian newspaper La Nuova Sardegna reported on Wednesday, 'The sea will always be there but habits are starting to change, just as the water does when the wind switches direction.'
