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Despite all the words and tough speeches, neither a Conservative nor Labour Government has come anywhere near stopping the boats.
In fact the numbers who have crossed from France to England this year on small boats are already higher than last year.
Both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer’s approaches have proven to be utterly useless.
Sunak agreed a deal with the French involving around £500million. That has proven to be a monumental rip-off. Our Government should be demanding the money back.
And surprise, surprise, Starmer’s ‘smash the gangs’ chat has achieved nothing.
This Thursday saw over 500 people crossing in a single day, on 11 different boats.
That now means over 29,000 people have already crossed this year. And there will be many more.
This dangerous crisis could have been stopped years ago. We should have taken the boats back to France and insisted to the French authorities that we weren’t going to tolerate this.
Started revoking French fishing licences for each boat that they failed to stop.
Left the ECHR so deportations could take place, that those arriving via this illegal route would soon know they would not be allowed to stay.
Instead we’ve had the Conservatives speak about all the tough things they would do now after failing to do any of them when they had the chance.
As paid subscriber Patrick commented in response to my last post:
“On the ECHR: these Tories arguing about it are just posturing peacocks.
“Even if they adopt it, the earliest it could happen is five years from now, and there is no way in the world the Lib core of their party will allow it.
“What I don’t understand is why the relatively sensible governments in Europe— eg Holland, Italy, Hungary, Poland— don’t just thank the ECHR for their input, refuse to implement it and return the postal fines to Brussels, marked Return to Sender.”
What is remarkable at the moment are the number of Governments across Europe doing their best to opt out of EU rules.
There have been dire warnings from the Polish, Dutch, Hungarians and Italians that things cannot continue as they are. Yet they are bound by the bloc’s failing regulations.
But post-Brexit our Government should have been far bolder - and their refusal to do so is why so many are now switching to Reform UK.
Speaking of Reform, a pretty big invitation went out this week that will lay a marker down ahead of the big May 2025 Council elections. There have already been defections.
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