This morning, GB News put the numbers on the table, and they are damning. Since Labour implemented its migrant returns arrangement with France last August — the so-called “one-in, one-out” deal — around 21,000 migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats, according to GB News’s provisional figures. Britain has managed to return just under 500.
That is not a deterrent. That is a 43-to-1 invitation. Government spending on this cooperation is estimated at around £100 million.
Yesterday, four more people — two men, two women — drowned near Wimereux, according to reports citing footage that appeared to show French officers present as migrants launched dinghies just days after another £16.2million payment to France. In the first nine days of April alone, 698 arrived.
GB News estimates total crossings since Labour took office at roughly 70,000, with interception rates reportedly down to about 33 per cent.
These figures are not abstract. They translate directly into longer housing queues, overcrowded classrooms, stretched NHS waiting lists and rising pressure on welfare budgets in towns already transformed by rapid demographic change.
Every arrival adds to the burden. Every failure to remove compounds.
The British people pay the price while the government talks about “progress”.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood calls this a “small first step” that will eventually deter.
Future generations will not forgive the PM after what GB News has learned about his migrant deal - Lee Cohen
|Getty Images
The British people, watching their towns change, their housing lists explode, and their taxes disappear, have a shorter phrase for it: national betrayal.
In an interview earlier this week, the great historian Dr David Starkey asked the question that now demands an answer: why does this establishment refuse to accept that its only moral obligation is to the British state and the British people?
The numbers have turned his question into an indictment. This is sheer contempt — the settled conviction that the concerns of ordinary Britons are provincial, embarrassing, and beneath the dignity of those who rule them. Keir Starmer’s government has made that contempt official policy.
The pattern is now unmistakable across every area Labour touches. In seats such as Gorton, electoral calculations with Islamist blocs, according to local reporting, come before public safety.
The rush to codify and police “Islamophobia” puts votes ahead of national cohesion.
Parallel political demands inside the United Kingdom are tolerated because they deliver seats, not because they strengthen Britain.
The governing class has stopped treating the national interest as the primary category of decision-making.
This disconnect did not begin on 5 July 2024. For decades, the British state has measured success by its contribution abroad rather than its effect on British wages, British streets and British identity.
Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s statements on liberal internationalism capture that mindset perfectly.
Policy is judged by how it looks in Brussels or Geneva, not by how it lands in Boston or Bolton.
Historical British statecraft judged every choice against the condition of the British people. That standard has been abandoned.
The contrast with the current American administration is instructive. Under President Trump, Washington has prioritised its own citizens in hostage recoveries, visa revocations and trade protection.
Objectives are concrete. Results are measurable. Steel tariffs shield American workers. Deportations move at a pace.
The southern border is treated as a sovereign line, not a suggestion. One government acts for its people. Britain, by contrast, writes cheques to Emmanuel Macron, begs for help that never comes, and watches French authorities stand aside while migrants launch boats and British taxpayers foot the bill. One country remembers its people. The other has forgotten them.
The refusal to leave the ECHR is the clearest symbol of this category error. It prevents the prompt removal of those with no right to remain.
It hands lawyers and activists a veto over British borders. It subordinates the inherited British population to transnational norms that were never designed to protect Britain.
The same logic explains the continued reliance on French goodwill that has delivered nothing but invoices.
Restoring the principle requires no slogans, just basic realism. Rip up the French deal immediately. Leave the ECHR so failed asylum claimants can be removed within days, not years.
Adopt the model that actually stopped the boats in Australia and was later echoed by American border enforcement: end the incentives — no hotels, no benefits, swift detention and deportation.
Put British veterans, British families and British taxpayers first in the queue for housing, schools and security. Calibrate immigration numbers to British economic need and cultural cohesion. Judge defence and foreign policy solely by British safety and prosperity. These steps are the minimum requirements for any government that claims legitimacy.
The liberal elite will scream “narrow nationalism”. That is their reflex whenever anyone suggests Britain should come first in its own country. It is not narrow.
It is the absolute minimum requirement of any legitimate government. A state that will not defend its own borders, its own culture and its own people has no moral authority to rule them.
Future generations will not forgive today’s cowardice. The boats keep coming, the deaths keep mounting, the costs keep rising, and still Shabana Mahmood talks about “small first steps”. Enough.
The British state exists for the British people — nothing more, nothing less. Everything else is dereliction of duty by another name.
Elections are looming. It is time to make them remember.