Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron met on the fringes of Cop27 in Egypt on Monday and the Prime Minister emerged ‘confident and optimistic’ that a solution will soon be found to the Channel migrant crisis.
Sunak should be careful he doesn’t suffer the same fate as Boris Johnson, who made vigorous noises in 2019 about eradicating illegal immigration and then proved utterly incapable of fulfilling his pledges.
If the PM is serious about finding a solution to the migrant crisis he’ll require more than just the cooperation of the French President. He’ll need to hold talks with the EU, the Albanian government and Giorgia Meloni.
So far this year approximately 40,000 migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats. More than twice that number have crossed the Mediterranean to Italy, and that number is likely to hit the six-figure mark before the year is out.
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