Every year it is the same. The weather warms, the sea calms, and the small boats start again. Around 36,000 people arrived by small boat in the year to the end of May, and while ministers will point to a year-on-year fall, the hard truth is that the busiest months are still ahead of us. The crossings have not stopped. They have simply paused for winter, as they always do.

The Deal That Did Not Deliver

Labour staked its credibility on a returns arrangement with France, the so-called one-in, one-out pilot. That pilot has just expired, on 11 June. And what did it achieve? By the government's own figures earlier in the year, a few hundred people had been returned while a similar number arrived under the scheme. You cannot describe a policy that returns roughly as many people as it lets in as a success. It was a gimmick, and the country can see it.

Around three quarters of those arriving are adult men. The people-smuggling gangs charge their fees, the dinghies keep launching, and the only thing that reliably grows is the asylum backlog and the hotel bill that comes with it.

Deterrence Is The Only Thing That Works

The uncomfortable reality for the open-borders lobby is that the only thing that stops illegal crossings is removing the incentive to make them. If you arrive illegally and the likely outcome is that you stay, you will keep coming. If the likely outcome is swift removal, the calculation changes. Every other answer is window dressing.

This is not about a lack of compassion. It is about basic order. A country that cannot say who comes in and who does not has given up one of the core functions of a state. People in Lancashire and across the country are not extreme for wanting their borders controlled. They are right.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK would treat illegal entry as exactly that. We would detain and swiftly remove those who arrive illegally, end the use of taxpayer-funded hotels, and make clear that crossing the Channel in a dinghy is not a route to settlement in Britain. We would take back control of who has the right to be here, and we would mean it.

Labour's deal has expired with little to show for it. The boats are back. The promises are broken. And the summer has barely begun.