Martin Daubney has accused Sir Keir Starmer of “backing the wrong horse” after the Prime Minister linked the small boats crisis to Brexit.
Speaking on GB News, Martin said the Prime Minister “hasn’t done his homework” as he unveiled figures showing how deportations collapsed under the EU’s Dublin Regulation while arrivals soared.
The dismantling of Mr Starmer’s argument comes as he blamed Nigel Farage for Britain’s migrant crisis, describing small boats crossing the Channel as “Farage boats” in a sit-down interview with GB News Political Editor Christopher Hope.
It appears the Prime Minister was talking about the EU-wide Dublin Convention, a rule that requires asylum seekers to be sent back to the first EU country they arrived in.
Martin pointed to his graph that showed returns and deportations
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Pointing to graphs that he made, Martin said on GB News: “The Prime Minister hasn’t done his homework, but I have. Let’s look at the first graph on the now. I spent three hours going down a rabbit hole earlier.
“Here is the reality. Forget about the Remainer myths. Stare in the mirror and look at the facts.”
He added: “They’re showing returns and deportations, and those taken into the UK over the period of the Dublin Regulation.
“The green bars show those we managed to deport, look at it plummeting off a cliff. The red bars, however, are those we took in, taking off like one of Elon Musk’s rockets.
“This is the reality. Here’s some more data for you over the entire period of the Dublin Regulation, 2008 to 2013: we managed to deport a net of 886 people.
“In the final years when the immigration crisis hit across the continent of Europe, we were unable to deport more than a handful. In fact, we became net recipients after the Brexit referendum.”
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Martin said that ‘Dublin was a disaster for the United Kingdom’
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“In 2020, of over 2,500 asylum seekers, we couldn’t deport them under Dublin terms because Brussels told us we had to take them in, it was a binding treaty across the whole continent.
“Not only is the Prime Minister backing the wrong horse on this, he’s actually proving Nigel Farage’s point: Dublin was a disaster for the United Kingdom.”
In the UK’s final years under the Dublin Convention, Britain became a net recipient of asylum seekers.
Home Office figures show just 676 were sent out of the country in 2016 and 2017, while 1,019 arrived in the UK over the same period.
Martin accused Sir Keir Starmer of ‘backing the wrong horse’
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The problem worsened in 2018: only 209 of 5,500 requests to return asylum seekers were completed, while the UK accepted 1,215 migrants.
The numbers stand in stark contrast to 2015, when just 131 asylum seekers were transferred into the UK, while 510 were sent out.
During his sit-down interview with GB News, Sir Keir claimed that Reform UK does not want to stop migrants crossing the Channel.
He said: “When we are trying to deal with our borders, we’re trying to pass the Borders Bill to give more powers to law enforcement to deal with the small boats.
“What did Nigel Farage do? He voted against it. We’ve got a returns deal with France. What does Nigel Farage do? He says he’d rip it up.
“There’s ID cards to stop them working illegally in our economy. He says he’ll reverse that.
“He doesn’t want to fix the problems because if the problem is fixed his reason to exist goes away.”