Britain has an Immigration Problem – and Keir Starmer’s One of Them

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

A record-high of 8,888 illegal immigrants have crossed the English Channel in 2025 under Keir Starmer’s lousy watch.

Of course, you won’t hear about it because we’re too busy trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to defining biological sex. God only knows how many millions of pounds and hours have been spent to conclude a woman is in fact… a woman.

But whilst we’re all paralysed in shock at this groundbreaking discovery, Keir Starmer is busy cutting a deal with the French over illegal immigrants crossing the channel.

Keir’s catastrophic migrant deal

Mr. Smash the Gangs has been in talks with the French to shake hands on the return of illegal immigrants – or, undoubtedly in Starmer’s words, the return of the sausages (sorry, hostages).

But this deal will smash the gangs as much as a plate of bangers and mash (the sausage puns end here).

Starmer is proposing to swap illegal immigrants for asylum seekers, who are currently holed up in France and seeking to join family members already in the UK. It will be a one in, one out system.

What is this, a Covid-era supermarket? Will the British and French borders be adorned with the green and red traffic lights that used to govern our entry into every public place?

It is complete and utter madness. Last Saturday, 656 migrants arrived in 11 small boats. That’s just in one day. So what are we going to do? Chuck them back on a taxpayer-funded UK Border Force boat, swap them for 656 asylum seekers from France who will be in an orderly line as if they’re queuing for a rollercoaster at Thorpe Park, and then bring them back to the UK? Is that really what’s going to happen?

No. Because any rational person can see this simply will not work. And that’s not even to mention the critical fact here: migration will not be going down. All we’re doing is swapping one migrant for another. Legal or not, 656 migrants will place the same huge burden on our NHS and public services.

We need a deterrent – and fast

It’s no secret that I severely dislike Nigel Farage’s views on immigration. I can’t count how many times I’ve lambasted Farage for ignoring that 1 in 5 doctors and nurses and 1 in 5 social carers are immigrants. Controlled immigration is good for our economy and good for flourishing communities.

But what we’ve seen for some time now is immigration that’s totally out of control.

Home Office figures show that, since 1 January 2018, almost 160,000 migrants have crossed the Channel in almost 4,500 small boats.

I’ll just let that sink in.

When Keir Starmer came to power, he cancelled the Rwanda scheme. It wasn’t perfect – of course it wasn’t. But it was a deterrent. And Starmer removed the deterrent without replacing it. No wonder illegal immigration figures are 42% higher than at this stage last year – and 81% higher than in 2023.

Now, swapping illegal immigrants for legal immigrants might sound like an improvement – and it is. But my issue with this so-called deal is that it will not bring immigration figures down. We’re simply swapping one immigrant for another. That doesn’t solve the crucial problem, which is oversubscribed public services and borders leakier than Swiss cheese.

Will Starmer get migration down?

Not with this deal he won’t.

Starmer claimed in March that his government has “returned more than 24,000 people who have no right to be here”. But that claim is false. Only 6,339 of these were enforced returns – with the majority being voluntary returns.

This deal won’t help. Starmer has been like a stuck record when it comes to smashing the gangs and striking a deal with the EU – but, as we approach a year in office, he’s done none of that.

Here’s an idea for Keir – and I’ll give this one away for free. Why not enforce the deals we’ve already got? Under the Le Touquet agreement, the UK agreed to pay France £476 million between 2023 and 2026 for more intense police monitoring for the Channel.

Where’s all that money gone? We get more news articles reporting daily record-breaking migrant crossings than articles telling us to expect a record-breaking heatwave – and in the UK, where a glimpse of sunshine is the most exciting thing since sliced bread, that’s saying something. So, as far as I’m concerned, the French police aren’t doing much good with our 476 million British pounds.

If Starmer throws another half a billion quid down the French drain, the British people will have him out of office quicker than he can say ‘sausages’.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/(Mstyslav Chernov/Unframe)

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