Latest news with #smallboats
Daily Mail
21 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Keir Starmer can dress up the migrant figures, but he's betrayed the British people: ALP MEHMET
When Sir Keir Starmer entered Downing Street last July, he vowed to 'smash the gangs' behind the barbaric trade in human cargo across the English Channel. So far, all he has smashed are the records for the number of illegal migrants making the journey to Britain. On Saturday alone, some 1,200 migrants arrived in small boats – the highest daily total so far this year. A staggering figure. But even more staggering is the Prime Minister's brazen attempt to pull the wool over the public's eyes. 'You have every right to be angry about small-boat crossings. I'm angry, too,' Starmer wrote on X this week, in an all-too-familiar display of hand-wringing and hollow empathy. In the same breath, he boasted that 'almost 30,000 people' had been removed from the UK – a statement clearly designed to mislead. Because, contrary to the impression given, that figure does not refer solely to small-boat migrants. In fact, it includes foreign nationals with no permission to be here – for example, students who've overstayed visas, failed asylum seekers from years ago and foreign offenders. Many will very likely have volunteered. The truth is that on Starmer's watch, the number of small-boat migrants removed in the 12 months to March fell 3 per cent year-on-year to 2,240. None of them was from countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan or Somalia. It wouldn't be the first time the Prime Minister has spun the facts in such a misleading fashion to hide the truth about Labour's abysmal record on immigration. Just last month, after new net migration figures showed a 50 per cent fall compared with 2023, the Home Office shared a flashy graphic on X that said: 'Net migration cut by nearly 50 per cent – the largest-ever drop in any 12-month period.' Sir Keir gleefully doubled down on the claim, stating that 'we have nearly halved net migration in the last year. We're taking back control'. In reality, this dramatic drop was almost entirely the result of visa-tightening measures brought in by the previous Conservative government – which Labour, in opposition, dismissed as 'chaotic' and a 'Tory failure'. Now they're shamelessly taking credit. Let's be clear: Labour only took office in the latter half of 2024. Starmer cannot take ownership of improvements made before he even stepped into No 10. What he can be judged on are the figures for 2025. And they make for grim reading. So far this year, more than 14,700 migrants have made the illegal, perilous crossing. At this rate, the total will likely surpass 50,000 by the end of 2025, bringing the number who've crossed since 2018 – when illegal boat crossings first began – to around 200,000. That's the equivalent of the population of Luton arriving in dinghies. And that's just those we know about. Those figures are a monument to the failure of Europe's elite to take these problems seriously. Politicians on both sides of the Channel have refused to get tough. While in Britain Labour and activist lawyers hide behind legalistic concerns about human rights and outdated treaties – intended to deal with different circumstances to justify doing nothing – Paris shrugs its shoulders with Gallic indifference while Brussels bangs on the EU drum. Disgraceful pictures emerged over the weekend showing French gendarmes standing by while dinghies full of migrants were loaded up by, we assume, the traffickers. A crime taking place directly in front of them, yet they still refused to act. What makes their failure to enforce the law all the more disgraceful is the huge sums of taxpayers' money that the French are accepting from Britain to patrol their coastline. Since 2010, we have either handed or pledged close to £600million (around €1billion) to our neighbours to help stem the tide. Instead, we have seen numbers rise. Why would the French intervene, when they're more than happy to wave these migrants through – many of whom have already had their asylum claims rejected in France? We have a right to feel cheated by France. But Starmer's Government's own strategy has been woeful. Having spent the last month cosying up to Brussels in a bid to 'reset' the UK's relationship with the EU, Starmer is too timid to ruffle French feathers or demand results for the huge sums we have handed over. He has failed to provide any means of deterrence to the illegal migrants, having abandoned the Tories' Rwanda scheme and miserably failed to set up any alternative. His half-hearted attempts to revive it – including a charm offensive aimed at persuading Albanian prime minister Edi Rama to host 'Rwanda mark two' holding hubs – ended in embarrassment. Starmer can try to dress the figures up as much as he likes – but no amount of clever wording will change the truth: he has betrayed the trust of British people.
Daily Mail
21 hours ago
- General
- Daily Mail
When Yvette Cooper speaks it all feels so formulaic, it conveys nothing: QUENTIN LETTS
Biggest vote turner at present? Small boats. That explains the rise of Nigel Farage 's Reform. Yesterday Yvette Cooper arrived at the home affairs select committee for what was expected to be a showdown. She was set to be interrogated about 'the work of the Home Office '. MPs were bound to go big on the small boats crisis. Weren't they? Not this lot. It was an hour and a half before the matter was raised and it received just ten minutes. Questions during that low-energy period were reserved for Starmerites. Owing to the result of the General Election, select committees are heavily dominated by Labour. The MP given most of the questions was Chris Murray (Lab, Edinburgh East & Musselburgh). In addition to being as damp as a frogman's jockstrap he happens to be the son of Margaret Curran, a sometime Labour MP who is now minister for Net Zero in the House of Lords. You will not be amazed to learn that wee Murray displayed all the feral aggression of a Portobello tea-shop waitress. He marvelled at Ms Cooper's command of the crisis. She could not have been handling it better, Mr Murray plainly felt. 'And will ye be taking another pink dainty cake, madam?' he did not quite ask the Home Secretary. Yvette Cooper arrives in Downing Street to attend the weekly Cabinet meeting in London on June 3 Mr Murray's cosy family connections were trumped by those of another Labour MP. Jake Richards (Rother Valley) disclosed that his sister is Ms Cooper's chief of staff. Their father is Steve Richards, a Blairite columnist and BBC type. Nor does it stop there. Jake's sister is married to another Labour MP, the implausibly tanned Gregor Poynton (Livingston), who himself was previously married to an ex-Labour MP, Gemma Doyle. The People's Party outdoes the Borgias for nepotism. It makes the Pakenhams look grindingly meritocratic. All this helped Ms Cooper. She could jabber away without significant interruption, wobbling her head and affecting artful concern about the Liverpool parade crash, youth terrorism and other matters. Sitting some three yards to her left, at shoulder level, one was offered an unusual angle of the Home Secretary. Watching her side-on, I could see a stillness in her pupils and sense the cogs of her brain engaging before screeds of policy exposition were squirted past two primly drawn lips. She is an efficient, prating machine. The brow corrugates. The hands chop and push imaginary obstacles on the desk in front of her. The larynx aims for a low, almost masculine note. There are many emphatic nods. It all feels so formulaic that it conveys... nothing. No novelty or spontaneity. No flashes of humanity. Just a programmed product. Although in some ways impressive, it has a bleakness to it. Watching her side-on, I could see a stillness in her pupils and sense the cogs of her brain engaging before screeds of policy exposition were squirted past two primly drawn lips She wore no wristwatch. Two of her tiny fingertips were smudged by ink. Beside her sat her new permanent secretary, Dame Antonia Romeo. In previous positions, Dame Antonia has been a flashy customer, all Jackie O glasses and shaken tresses, bringing a whiff of ocean air and Roger et Gallet scent to any room. Now that she is working for Ms Cooper, Dame Antonia has gone conventual. She has abjured glamour. Said not a single word. She just gazed at her ministerial mistress with ostensible interest. Can the unquenchable Romeo really have been tamed? Shaun Davies (Lab, Telford), a blowy sort, apologetically asked if we might have more success in discouraging small-boat arrivals if we diluted European human-rights conventions. Ms Cooper shrugged that one off without effort. We did not want to upset the French and Germans. The committee's chairman, Dame Karen Bradley (Con, Staffordshire Moorlands) caught a few midges in her sagging jaw. Robbie Moore (Con, Keighley & Ilkley) scored a few runs by pestering Ms Cooper about grooming gangs. Paul Kohler (Lib Dem, Wimbledon) blew his nose in a vast red hanky and admired his long fingers. Peculiar. And in the Commons chamber there was discussion about drinking water being tainted by sewage, and one of the questions came from an MP called Mr Swallow.
Sky News
a day ago
- General
- Sky News
Why good weather isn't to blame for small boat crossings
👉 Listen to Sky News Daily on your podcast app 👈 The Home Office says the doubling of good weather days this year compared to the start of 2024 "coincides with small boat arrivals being 46% higher" - but research by Sky's Data and Forensics team shows a rise in crossings during bad weather as well. On today's Sky News Daily, Niall Paterson is joined by Sky News' political correspondent Ali Fortescue and senior data journalist Daniel Dunford to assess what the new data tells us about how well the government's plans to tackle small boat crossings are working and what they have learnt about how the smuggling gangs are adapting.
The Guardian
a day ago
- General
- The Guardian
Calm weather and fuller boats leading to more Channel arrivals, Home Office says
The record numbers of people arriving in the UK via small boats should be blamed on favourable weather and greater numbers being crammed into vessels, Home Office analysis has claimed. Figures show there were twice as many 'red days' – when there are calmer conditions in the Channel, meaning crossings are more likely – in the first four months of this year as there were in the same period in 2024. In the year ending April 2025, 47% of boats crossing the Channel had 60 or more people onboard, compared with 2% in the year to April 2022. The Migration Observatory at Oxford University challenged the Home Office analysis, saying there was no evidence that weather was a major factor in long-term increases in boat arrivals. Charities said the analysis ignored the fact that most people attempting to come to the UK were found to be legitimate asylum seekers driven by war, famine and climate change. The analysis has been released as Keir Starmer attempts to fight off a growing challenge from Nigel Farage's Reform UK. Labour party officials are convinced that rising irregular immigration numbers will be a key issue in future elections. On Saturday, more than 1,100 migrants and refugees arrived in the UK, bringing the annual total to 14,812, up 42% on this time last year. According to the figures released on Tuesday, there were 60 red days in the first four months of 2025, compared with 27 over the same period in 2024 and 23 in the first part of 2023. There were 93.5% more red days during the first 10 months of Starmer's government than in the same period a year earlier. In that time, there was a 34.5% increase in the number of arrivals, from 25,571 between July 2023 to April 2024, to 34,401 in the 10 months to April 2025. The number of people travelling in each dinghy has increased, the figures show. In April 2023, there was only, one boat carrying more than 80 people. In April this year, there were 33 boats carrying 80 or more people. Assessments of the likelihood of Channel crossings are prepared for the Home Office by the Met Office. The assessments are colour-coded red, amber or green according to likelihood of activity based on environmental and other factors, including wave height, surf conditions on beaches, wind speed and direction, the chance of rain, and recent trends in conditions. Peter Walsh, a senior researcher at the Migration Observatory, said: 'There's no evidence to suggest that the weather is a major factor explaining long-term increases in small boat arrivals such as the one we've seen over the past eight months. 'It seems unlikely that the weather is much more than a short-term constraint on small boat crossings. Other factors, such as the number of people wanting to reach the UK and the number and professionalisation of smuggling gangs, are likely to be more important.' Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: 'It's obviously correct to acknowledge that there are more crossings when there are good weather days, but it is also important to recognise that enforcement measures alone are so far not achieving the intended outcome. 'Many men, women and children taking these journeys are fleeing countries like Sudan, where war is forcing them from their homes. People do not risk their lives on a flimsy boat in the Channel unless they are running from horrors more frightening than they face in the sea.' A Home Office spokesperson said: 'This government is restoring grip to the broken asylum system it inherited that saw a whole criminal smuggling enterprise allowed to develop, where gangs have been able to exploit periods of good weather to increase the rate of crossings for too long.'
Sky News
a day ago
- Climate
- Sky News
Government draws link between good weather and small boat crossings - but they are rising during bad conditions too
Good weather in the first half of the year may help to explain an increase in small boat arrivals to the UK, according to the government. But our analysis shows that there has also been a big rise in crossings on days when the weather has been poor. A record 11,074 people arrived in small boats before May this year, a rise of almost 50% compared with the same period last year. According to the Home Office figures, 60 of those days this year were classed as "red days" - where Channel crossings are more likely because of good weather - compared with just 27 last year. In a new report, the Home Office says that the doubling of red days from January to April 2025, compared with the same period in 2024, "coincides with small boat arrivals being 46% higher" over that period. Our analysis, using similar criteria to the Home Office, but not attempting to directly replicate their methodology, agrees that there have been an unusually high number of days this year when the weather makes for good sailing conditions. But it also shows that there are significantly more people making the crossing when the weather is not ideal - a rise of 30% on last year, and more than double compared with the year before. We've classified the weather as being favourable on a day when, for several consecutive hours early in the morning, wave height, wind speed, rain and atmospheric pressure were all at levels the Met Office says typically contribute to good conditions for sailing. There's more detail on our methodology lower down this page. There is a clear link between better weather and more people arriving in the UK on small boats. An average of 190 people per day have arrived so far this year when the weather has been fair, compared with 60 on days with less consistently good conditions. But if we look just at the days when the weather is not so good, we can also see a clear and consistent rise in the numbers over time. That average of 60 arrivals per "low viability" day is a rise of more than 30% on last year, and more than double the 24 that arrived on each similar day in 2023. 2:22 There are a range of reasons why more people could be crossing on bad weather days. Smuggler tactics are changing, and Home Office data shows severely overcrowded boats are becoming more common. In the year to April 2022, just 2% of boats had 60 or more people on board, compared with 47% in the year to April 2025. In other words, in the space of three years, the number of boats with more than 60 on board has gone from 1 in 50 to every second boat. Dr Peter Walsh, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, told Sky News that a rise in demand due to geopolitical issues, like the situation in Afghanistan, may be a factor, but that it is interesting that illegal entries to the EU are down while they have risen in the UK. What is the Home Office doing? The current government has placed a major emphasis on disrupting the smuggler gang supply chains to restrict the number of boats and engines making it to the French coast. Part of the problem is that French authorities are unable to intercept boats once they are already in the water, which is believed to have been exacerbated by good weather. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has confirmed the French government is reviewing its policies after she pressed for a law change that would allow police in France to apprehend migrants in shallow waters. The Home Office released figures on Thursday that revealed France is intercepting fewer Channel migrants than ever before, despite signing a £480m deal with the UK to stop the crossings. 19:32 How are we defining good and bad days? The Home Office says that its assessments of the likelihood of small boat crossings are passed to it by the Met Office. "A Red, Amber, Green (RAG) daily crossing assessment is produced of the likelihood of small boat crossing activity based on the forecasted wave height and other environmental and non-environmental factors; such as rates of precipitation, surf conditions on beaches, wind speed and direction, open-source forecasts, and recent trends." We've not tried to replicate that methodology directly. But we've looked at Met Office categorisations for wave height, wind speed, atmospheric pressure and rain, four factors that each contribute to fair conditions for sailing in a small boat. They say a wind speed of 5m/s is a "gentle breeze". They classify precipitation as at least 0.1mm of rain per hour. If the "significant wave height" - the height of the highest one third of waves - is below 0.5m, they say that's "smooth". Standard pressure at sea level is 1,013hPa, and high pressure "tends to lead to settled weather conditions" . We've set the minimum pressure at 1,015hPa, on the high side of standard, and used the thresholds listed above for the other metrics. We've categorised a "high viability" day as one in which all four of those conditions were met in the Dover Strait for at least four consecutive hours, between 2am and 6am UK time. A "low viability" day is where there is no more than one hour during which all those conditions were met. And "medium" is when the conditions are met for 2-3 hours.
