Nigel Farage warns of Channel crossing surge within HOURS as UK-France deal ends: 'A very busy day!'

Georgia Pearce
Tue, 31 Mar 2026 11:41:18 +0000

Nigel Farage has warned the UK will see a fresh surge in Channel crossings as soon as "tomorrow", as the UK's border deal with France comes to an end.

Speaking to GB News, the Reform UK leader declared that it "won't make a difference" whether the UK has a deal with France or not - the illegal migrants will still make the perilous journey.

Questioned by GB News Reporter Keith Bays on the deal with the French coming to an end at midnight tonight, Mr Farage said that even though the UK has given the French "£800million since 2014", the illegal migrants will "come back the next time there is a calm day".

He said: "The deal with the French expires at midnight tonight. That will now be a total of £800million that we've given them since 2014.

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"It wouldn't make any difference whether we agreed to a further £365million or not. Even if the French do stop boats from crossing, the same people come back the next time there is a calm day."

Warning the next forecasted calm day is "tomorrow", Mr Farage stressed: "The forecast tomorrow in the Channel, after quite a calm day to day, is winds to be light and variable.

"Tomorrow will be a very busy day in the English Channel."

Making clear that the British public is getting "angrier and angrier" about the state of the nation's migrant crisis, the Reform leader argued the "pull factors" for illegal migrants crossing the Channel are still too high.

He explained: "It's all about pull factors. It's all about the fact that you've got a 97.5 per cent chance, whoever you are, of staying in the United Kingdom if you illegally cross the channel in a small boat.

"And I think the public are getting angrier and angrier about this."

Hitting out at the "unfairness" of the processing of illegal migrants in comparison to legal migrants, Mr Farage said the "only way" to deal with it is to "detain and deport" them.

The Reform leader told GB News: "People who come here legally now have to go through quite a long, expensive process. The fact that those who come that get waved through the system go to the top of the social housing list, there is the issue of fairness.

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"And not a week goes by when we don't read of some genuinely horrific sexual assault committed in this country by young men who come from cultures in which women are not even classed as second-class citizens."

Stressing the "threat they pose to national security", he continued: "I have believed for some years that the young men who are coming who throw their passports and their ID documents into the Channel at the 12-mile line, as they are encouraged to do, and I've actually filmed them doing it, pose a threat to national security.

"We have no idea whether people coming in are ISIS sympathisers, whether they sympathise with the ayatollah regime, and frankly, the only way to deal with this is to detain and deport. It is the only way."

Recalling his conversation with Jordan Bardella, the favourite in France to be the next French President, Mr Farage said the National Rally president "gulped" when hearing of Reform's plan.

Mr Farage said: "I have spoken to Jordan Bardella, who was the short odds-on favourite to be the next French President, and I've said to him that if necessary, we will tow the boats back.

"The Royal Marines will tow the boats back to the beaches of northern France, and he gulped a bit when I first said it.

"But then he realised, if people know they can't cross the Channel, then the lives of those people living in Calais, all those towns in northern France, which frankly have become hellish over the last few years, would improve as well."

The Reform leader concluded: "So we are absolutely resolute, but none of this will happen, none of this will happen all the while we stay part of the outdated European Convention on Human Rights."