As the scale of the migration crisis in the Channel grows, Nigel Farage is right to demand the French step up and help us stop it, argues Aaron Newbury.
Nigel Farage has demanded the French do more (Image: Getty)
Each week it seems we are beset with tales of horror in the English Channel, as more people lose their lives in an attempt at the crossing.
Statistics show that the scale of this crisis is growing. Figures from the Migration Observatory reveal around 193,000 people reached this country between 2018 and 2025. That’s roughly midway between the population of Peterborough and Bournemouth.
Come 2026 and the number of crossings has already reached 14,561 this year.
Few politicians in Westminster deny that the mass influx of people across the Channel is having an impact on services and local communities
Naturally, each party is scrabbling to show how seriously it takes the crisis, and an arms race of who can propose the more severe-sounding approach has broken out on the right.
Reform UK have made combating mass migration (of which small boat crossings is a mere 5 per cent) a cornerstone of their pitch.
In that arms race, Nigel Farage’s public statements have taken a more Gallophobic edge, born of a feeling of resentment that the UK will send £662million across the Channel to curtail the crossings.
Given that just 4 per cent of the 14,561 crossings have reportedly been returned to France – the country from which they disembarked – it is easy to see why.
Ending the crisis, which claims several lives each year (last year it took 24), must surely require the co-operation of those nations on either side of the Channel.
Recent reports by the Express make it increasingly hard to deny that the French side is not doing enough to prevent the crossings in the first place.
Video footage of French police openly informing people they have been told to let migrants board their dinghies will hardly help calm agitated Brits on this side of the Channel.
But Mr Farage, as ever, is viewing this crisis through his characteristically Anglo-centric view – one he has justifiably adopted for much of his career.
‘We do not want the migrants here, and we pay you to stop them, so why aren’t you?’, is in effect the argument of those who demand the French do more.
Yet the problem – which to his credit Mr Farage has identified long ago – is that this deal was a rotten one from the start.
It is not in the interests of Paris to prevent the migrants from attempting the crossing in the first place, no matter how much we pay them to do so.
Retaining migrants in your own country comes hand in hand with a large bill, be it for housing, welfare, aid or health.
That can, as recent protests have seen, cause large scale unrest in settled communities who feel put upon by the recently arrived.
Paris does not want this on their own doorstep, so it is highly unlikely that they will ever fully bring to heel an issue that, in not acting as they have been asked, enables them to export it.
Tackling this crisis requires more than mere money, and it requires more than sticking the navy in the Channel and forcing the desperate back to France.
Whether we like it or not the solution is one that will likely take years, and require vast amounts of political will, funding, and patience.
Disincentivising people to try and come here – through reforms to the welfare system, partnered with extensive work with European countries to end the ‘pass the parcel’ of migration, is just the start.
Turning away those who make the crossing, and arranging for their resettlement either to countries that want the additional populace, or back home (once their country of origin is safe) will take years, if not decades.
There is, as I suspect politicians have realised, no quick fix to the crisis – but the longer term fix may require a series of political sacrifices that popularity-hungry politicians are not ready to make.