Illegal immigrants continue to flow into England across the calm waters of the Channel. The latest data from the Home Office states that nearly 1,500 people have arrived in the last week. Weekends are proving particularly popular: 703 migrants came ashore on Sunday August 11 and 492 made landfall last Saturday.
So much for Keir Starmer’s pre-election pledge to be tough on small boats and tough on the causes of small boats. Labour’s apparent indifference to mass uncontrolled immigration is no doubt a significant factor in the recent poll that revealed more than half of Britons believe the government ‘is heading in the wrong direction’.
A majority of Britons would say the same thing of the migrants making the most of the benign weather to sail across the Channel. It’s not just the elements working in their favour; the political turmoil in France has created a power vacuum that is being exploited by the criminal gangs who make such riches from smuggling people across borders.
So much for Keir Starmer’s pre-election pledge to be tough on small boats and tough on the causes of small boats
A report last week in Le Figaro laid bare the deteriorating situation in France, which includes a ‘very worrying situation...and very high flow to Great Britain’. According to Fernand Gontier, the former head of France’s border police: ‘Illegal immigration on a massive scale is becoming unmanageable, dangerous and destabilising for democracies and our way of life.’
As in Britain, illegal immigration is a pressing concern for voters in France with three-quarters believing there are too many migrants. Yet, as in Britain, the ruling elite in Paris refuse to confront the crisis. Lucie Castets, the left-wing coalition’s candidate to be Prime Minister, last week outlined her five priorities for the coming parliament: education, health, social justice, the environment and purchasing power. Nothing about illegal immigration.
At the same time that Castets was selling her political vision to France so was Gabriel Attal, the man widely seen as Emmanuel Macron’s protégée. Again, no mention of restoring order to borders.
This is not a surprise. Attal, who resigned as Prime Minister last month, has been at the heart of a government that has allowed immigration – legal and illegal – to reach [9] unprecedented levels.
The majority of the French electorate may want their borders better controlled but the Paris elite refuse to listen; for them, the concept of free movement is sacrosanct.
Castets and Attal will be among the political leaders attending what Emmanuel Macron says are ‘a series of discussions’ at the Élysée this Friday. The discussions will be fraught.
Castets has made clear that she and her coalition want nothing to do with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, as has Attal.
Le Pen believes that Castets has no right to attend the discussions, describing the Parisian technocrat as ‘not a member of parliament, nor party leader, nor group president. She is imposed by the minority coalition.’
The bitter divisions within the political class are a microcosm of the fractures that have split France since the European and parliamentary elections earlier in the summer. Some commentators claim the split is three way: beteen the left, the centre and the right. But in fact, as the second round of the parliamentary election demonstrated, the split is binary. It is the Traditionalists, who are led by Le Pen and Eric Ciotti, the president of the centre-right Republicans, against the Progressives.
The Progressives are composed of Macron’s centrists and the left-wing coalition, and they champion what Jean-Luc Melenchon calls a ‘New France’. The construction of this new France is reliant on mass immigration, which is why Macron and Melenchon are such enthusiastic supporters of free movement.
If Britain thought the small boats crisis was bad now, just wait and see what happens in the months and years ahead.
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