Forty-one thousand people. Let that figure sink in. That is more than the population of Lancaster. An entire town's worth of human beings boarded inflatable dinghies on French beaches in 2025, were waved off by the French coastguard, and were collected by Border Force taxis halfway across the Channel. A 13% jump on the year before. The second-highest total since records began.

Since 2018 the Home Office has now logged 197,376 small-boat arrivals. Almost two hundred thousand people have walked into Britain through a back door we refuse to close. And the Labour government — which spent years in opposition lecturing the Conservatives about their failure on the Channel — has done precisely nothing to bring those numbers down.

Smashing the Gangs? They Are Laughing at Us

Keir Starmer's flagship pledge was to "smash the gangs." Remember that? It was on every leaflet, every billboard, every soundbite. Smash the gangs. Well, the gangs are doing fine. Their boats still leave, their customers still pay, and the smuggling networks across northern France are richer than ever. The only thing being smashed is the credibility of British immigration policy.

Labour scrapped the Rwanda scheme on day one. Whatever you thought of it, it was a deterrent — and Labour binned it before it had a chance to bite. They replaced it with vague promises about international cooperation and a French returns pilot that has so far returned 305 people while 367 came the other way. The maths is brutal: we are running a deficit at our own border.

The Hotel Bill the Public Are Not Allowed to Forget

While the boats come, the hotel bills mount. Up and down the country, asylum seekers are housed in three- and four-star hotels at a cost of millions of pounds a day. Local communities are not consulted. Local councils are presented with a fait accompli. Local taxpayers — already squeezed by frozen tax thresholds, council tax rises and rocketing energy bills — are forced to pay.

In Lancashire I see this every week. Working families paying their dues, watching their high streets decay, and being told by Labour ministers that there is no money for anything — except, somehow, for indefinite hotel accommodation for people who arrived illegally. The British public are not stupid. They can see what is happening. And they are furious.

A Two-Tier System Built on Sand

Labour's November reforms — granting refugees temporary status that has to be renewed every 30 months, with settlement only after 30 years for those who arrived without authorisation — are a fig leaf. They sound tough on paper. In practice they will be challenged, watered down, and quietly dropped the first time a judge in Strasbourg objects. We have seen this film before.

The fundamental problem is that Britain has lost the will to enforce its own borders. Until we recover that will, no amount of paperwork will fix the situation. You can rewrite the rules a hundred times, but if you cannot or will not remove people who have no right to be here, the rules are meaningless.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK's position is clear and consistent. Detain on arrival. Process within days, not years. Remove those who fail. Leave the European Convention on Human Rights if it stands in the way. Withdraw from the 1951 Refugee Convention and negotiate new terms that reflect the modern world. Use the Royal Navy to turn boats around in the Channel where it is safe to do so.

None of this is extreme. None of it is cruel. It is what every other serious country does. Australia did it. They stopped the boats. Britain could too — if it had a government with the spine to act. Labour does not. Reform UK would.