‘Summer Sale’ on Crossings: Smugglers Laugh at Labour Crackdown

ER Editor: Keir Starmer had promised to smash the asylum gangs as part of his election promises. Neil Wilby tackles the same topic as Michael Curzon below, from March of this year —

“Smash the Gangs”: Keir Starmer’s Failing Pledge and the Channel Crisis That Won’t Go Away

Of note:

Dozens of overloaded dinghies continued to land on English beaches each week, making a mockery of the “smash the gangs” pledge. The relentless numbers have left Starmer’s government struggling to claim any progress. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper admitted it was “no comfort” to see crossings still running so high​. Indeed, while 2024’s final total remained slightly below the 2022 peak, it was significantly higher than when Starmer took office – a clear indication that the flow of illegal migration has not been stemmed.

Early 2025 offered little respite. Hundreds more people arrived in the first weeks of January, exploiting every window of calm weather. On one mid-January Saturday, 801 migrants crossed in 14 boats – the highest daily figure since Labour came to power (and the second-highest for the entire crisis) according to official briefings, underscoring how unabated the situation remains. For all of Starmer’s tough talk, the Channel migrant crisis endures at essentially the same scale, if not worse.

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When it comes to the small-boat gangs themselves, there have been some arrests and international police stings, yet no evidence of a crippling blow to their business model. Smuggling kingpins remain elusive; as one immigration expert noted, these are “decentralised” networks – there’s not some big boss you can smash”​. Gangs adapt quickly to enforcement pressure: when patrols increased on one French beach, launch points simply shifted elsewhere along the coast​.

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Home Office officials privately acknowledge that border control is already tightly enforced, yet “the gangs are very adaptive and keep outsmarting most provisions”​. This cat-and-mouse dynamic suggests there is no quick fix.

Worth reading in full. Now we have summer discounts on those Channel-crossings. 

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Gangs mock Britain’s ‘smash the gangs’ pledge as migrant numbers soar.

MICHAEL CURZON for EUROPEAN CONSERVATIVE

People smugglers are laughing at the British Labour government’s pledge to ‘smash the gangs’ and are hoping for a particularly busy summer of Channel crossings thanks to special ‘season’ discounts.

Migrants will be able to pay thousands of pounds less to get from France to the UK via a small boat, reports said this week. So far this year, the number of crossings has already passed 10,000—and at the earliest point of the year since records began—which doesn’t bode well for daily figures during the summer.

Migrants picked up at sea attempting to cross the English Channel from France, disembark from Border Force vessel ‘Typhoon’ after it arrived at the Marina in Dover  Photo by Ben STANSALL / AFP

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Smugglers have also offered discounted prices—ranging from between £1,000 and £2,000 (€1,180-€2,360) as opposed to prices as high as £6,000 (€7,070)—to migrants willing to feature in promotional footage shared on social media. Crossings have been advertised this way on sites like TikTok and Instagram for years.

After one account advertised crossing arrangements for £1,500 (€1,770) in late March, a number of social media users responded asking for the phone numbers of smugglers.

This, of course, offers another route of distraction for officials, who busy themselves playing whack-a-mole with social media accounts rather than deterring future crossings by pursuing removals of illegal migrants. All the while, the British taxpayer pays £3,172 (€3,740) every day to house migrants in hotels.

Labour MP Nadia Whittome also said after the recent local elections—in which Nigel Farage’s Reform UK took another important step towards its goal of national governance—that “going tough on immigration isn’t working.” If, as Whittome’s comment suggests, Labour thinks it has been working hard to stop illegal migration, it is hard to imagine how much worse the situation will get when the party takes a (further) step back.

Published to The Liberty Beacon from EuropeReloaded.com

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