Machete pulled on shadow home secretary at Calais migrant camp
The Tory frontbencher said his group was confronted by a man brandishing a machete before glass bottles were thrown at them.
His visit to the 'new jungle' camp by the French port city came after the number of small boat crossings under the Labour Government passed 50,000 this week.
Mr Philp went to France on Tuesday night to 'find out more about what's happening on the ground' and report on the illegal migration crisis.
Exiting the jungle 2 near Dunkirk where we had a machete pulled on us. Then got pelted with glass bottles in the video below. Footage from inside the camp to follow @Daily_Express @JournoZak pic.twitter.com/AqmKhAzy1l
— Chris Philp MP (@CPhilpOfficial) August 13, 2025
At midday on Wednesday, he wrote on X: 'Just had a knife pulled on us in the new jungle camp by Dunkirk and then pelted with bottles while trying to speak to migrants. Will post [an] update later.'
In an interview with GB News as his car left the migrant camp, Mr Philp said: 'I visited the so-called 'jungle two', the new jungle [camp] where migrants waiting to cross the Channel are camp … It's just outside Dunkirk, not far from Calais.
'And I was talking to migrants there literally about 10 or 15 minutes ago. And first of all, as I was talking to some migrants, one of them pulled out a curved machete and started brandishing it, at which point we left pretty quickly.
'And as we were leaving, we [got] pelted with glass bottles, and as we drove off other bottles got thrown at the car.'
Describing it as a 'pretty nerve-wracking experience', Mr Philp added: 'There were only like five of us and I don't know how many illegal migrants, probably one or two thousand in that camp. So it was a slightly unsettling experience, but everyone got out OK.'
The site of the original Calais 'jungle' camp was dismantled almost a decade ago in October 2016, at the height of the European migrant crisis prompted by the civil war in Syria.
The shanty-town was home to thousands of mainly African and Afghan young men, with much of it eventually reduced to ash and rubble after departing migrants set fire to tents.
Mr Philp said the 'new jungle' camp was also home to thousands of migrants, adding that Sir Keir Starmer's attempted crackdown on illegal migration had done little to stop its inhabitants from trying to reach Britain.
He said: 'People who pull knives, these people are on their way to the UK in the dinghies and we were certainly seriously threatened just a few minutes ago…
'No one in that camp is deterred. They are all determined to come to the UK and I saw lots of people around there carrying life jackets, and we know why they're carrying life jackets because they're planning to get on a small boat, or now a not-so-small boat.'
Mr Philp added there were 'two nationalities' – Eritreans and Afghans – in the area of the migrant camp he visited.
Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, said this week that she would reduce the number of migrants crossing the Channel to zero 'quickly' if she became prime minister.
Speaking on the Isle of Wight, Mrs Badenoch dismissed Labour's plan to smash the gangs as 'just a slogan'.
Asked if she could reduce the number to zero, Mrs Badenoch said: 'I think that we can ... it wouldn't happen straight away, but it would happen quickly.
'My team are now looking at what we can do in terms of detention centres, but stopping people from coming here in the first place – if they think they're going to be sent to Rwanda and not get here, get a free hotel, get benefits, then they won't come here.'
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