Approximately 25,000 illegal aliens have crossed the English Channel from France since the beginning of this year, around triple the number that arrived in 2020, when 8,404 made the journey.
The estimations were revealed as the government appears to have gone into panic mode over the English Channel migrant crisis, with a government review looking into the record number of landings.
Public perception of the government’s handling of the situation is not favourable to the Johnson administration, either, with the majority of all voters and three-quarters of those who backed Boris in the 2019 election thinking the Tories are “too soft” in dealing with the illegal migrant flows.
The Times reported on Saturday that hundreds of more people had crossed the Channel on Friday in a bid to beat the coming bad weather, with small boats arriving on the shores of Dungeness, Folkestone, and Dover in the south-east English county of Kent. One eyewitness told the newspaper that he saw around 300 people arrive at Dungeness alone.
The newspaper of record calculated that the latest arrivals, in their hundreds, will add to the 24,700 already known to have arrived by boat this year, triple the 8,404 who landed in 2020.
Prime Minister Johnson is reportedly said to be “exasperated” by his own government’s failure to get to grips with the mass illegal migration coming largely via France, and has ordered a review into how to prevent it.
A senior government source told The Times that the crisis has become his “number one priority” which the “entire government machinery” must get behind to solve.
Johnson has appointed Cabinet Office minister Stephen Barclay to lead the review, looking at what other departments can do to solve the problem including diplomatic options like “offshoring” the processing of migrants to a third country which will be paid for hosting the asylum seekers.
Meanwhile, a poll conducted by the Tory-leaning Telegraph has revealed that 55 per cent of the British public and 77 per cent of those who voted Conservative in the last election think the government’s approach to handling the English Channel migrant crisis has been “too soft”.
A former Conservative front-bencher told the newspaper that the migrant crisis could be more damaging to the party than the alleged ‘sleaze scandals’, saying: “People are genuinely fed up with this. So I think you can be pretty tough. That will mean that we will end up in the courts, but the Government has got to fight this.”
Another Tory MP observed that a ‘review’ would be rather a pointless exercise without action, saying: “It’s all very well putting Steve Barclay on it. What’s he going to find out? That they need to get on with the bloody thing.”
Despite the tough talk appearing to be leaked from the government, Reform UK leader Richard Tice has told Breitbart London that he doesn’t believe Johnson has the “political guts” or “political will” to take a firm line on stopping illegal mass migration.
Speaking to this publication last week, Mr Tice — who is running for a parliamentary seat in the upcoming Sidcup by-election — said: “We should be at zero tolerance of illegal immigration.”
“The government is failing woefully, utterly woefully, because they are incompetent because they talk the talk, but they never walk the walk in terms of delivery, action, and deeds,” he added.
Saying he supported the ‘turn back the boats’ policy, Mr Tice said: “There’s absolutely no question we have to make clear that nobody who comes over illegally by the Channel will be granted asylum.”
Adding: “The first thing you do is you stop the dangerous situation, so you pick them up in the Border Force boats and you take them back to France which we can do under existing international law. We just don’t have the political guts, the political will to do it.”
Kurt Zindulka / Breitbart News
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