May is when the boats start. Every year, as the Channel calms and the days lengthen, the smugglers in Calais begin their season. We have known this for years. The Home Office has known. The Border Force has known. And yet here we are again, in May 2026, watching the dinghies launch and the count climb, with a Labour government that has no plan worth the paper it is written on.

Over 2,200 people crossed the Channel in the first two months of 2026 — before the season even properly started. The one-in-one-out pilot with France, announced with so much fanfare last summer, has now returned 305 people to France while admitting 367 to the UK. That is a net loss. By the government's own figures, their flagship returns deal is making the problem worse.

A Pilot That Proves the Critics Right

When the one-in-one-out scheme was announced, Labour told the country it would break the smugglers' business model. It would deter. It would deliver. The reality, eight months in, is that it has done neither. The smugglers are still operating. The boats are still leaving. And the bilateral arithmetic has flipped against us.

Think about that. For every person France took back, France sent us one and a quarter. That is not a returns deal. That is the British taxpayer subsidising a French diplomatic talking point. Yvette Cooper called it innovative. The smugglers called it a marketing gift. Both were right.

The 30-Year Settlement Trick

The other plank of Labour's strategy — announced in November and applied to claims from 2 March 2026 — is to grant successful asylum seekers only a 30-month temporary status, with up to a 30-year wait before they can apply for settlement. Reform UK supports the principle of harder settlement rules. But this policy is a fig leaf. It does nothing to stop the boats arriving in the first place. It just promises that, in 2056, we might begin to deal with the consequences.

The British public are not interested in policies that pay off in three decades. They want to see the boats stopped now. They want to see the camps closed in Calais. They want to see French police actually doing what the £662 million we've paid them is supposed to fund.

The Real Numbers Tell the Real Story

2025 saw approximately 41,500 small boat arrivals — the second-highest annual figure on record and a 13% rise on the year before. Labour came into office promising to "smash the gangs." Since then, crossings have increased, not decreased. The cumulative total has now passed 200,000 since the route opened. We are no longer talking about a crisis. We are talking about a permanent feature of the British state's failure to defend its own border.

And every arrival comes with cost: hotel rooms, processing teams, legal aid, healthcare, schooling, ongoing accommodation. The estimated annual hotel bill alone is in the billions. That money should be funding British public services for British citizens. Instead it is paying for a policy that even Labour ministers can no longer pretend is working.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK has a plan and we have been clear about it. Detain on arrival in a network of secure processing centres. Process claims in weeks, not years. Remove failed claimants on chartered flights to safe third countries — and yes, where necessary, withdraw from international agreements that prevent us from doing so. End the legal industry that turns every removal into a multi-year court fight. Make the Channel crossing an unrewarded journey, not a guaranteed path to permanent residency.

The smugglers respond to incentives. Right now Labour is sending them every signal they want. Reform UK would send them one signal: this route is closed.