Nigel Farage has delivered his verdict on a recent surge in small boats crossing the Channel after a fresh wave of arrivals took the overall total for 2025 past 40,000.
The Reform UK leader, who was attending a charity event in his Clacton constituency, warned Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to “smash the gangs” has become “farcical” following the arrival of 737 illegal migrants yesterday.
Speaking to GB News, Mr Farage said: “I said during the election campaign, ‘smash the gangs, was never going to work’.
“For decades, I’ve been told we’re going to smash the drug gangs. Well, look how that’s gone. It’s gone absolutely nowhere.
“And somehow people have been allowed to get away with it. The numbers are up. There are more hotels in use now than there were when they first came into power.
“It seems barely a day goes by where we don’t see a serious sexual assault or rape being committed by a young man on these dinghies.
“And I’ve said, for a decade, that if you allow people who come from cultures where women aren’t even second-class citizens to come into Britain, beware of what the results might be.”
The Reform UK leader added: “There is no deterrent. There is no will. The ‘one-in, one-out’ policy has proved to be a complete farce.
“And Shabana Mahmood talks tough, talks the big game, but, of course, they won’t contemplate dealing with the Human Rights Act, which came in under Blair’s Government, which brings the European Convention on Human Rights into British law.
Nigel Farage has delivered his verdict on a recent surge in small boats crossing the Channel after a fresh wave of arrivals took the overall total for 2025 past 40,000
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“Starmer and a Cabinet of human rights lawyers won’t countenance dealing with that and therefore the problem will continue.
“The problem will get worse. The British public will simply get angrier.”
Polls suggest an overwhelming majority of British voters want Sir Keir’s Government to get a grip of the small boats crisis.
A recent YouGov poll, which was commissioned by the Women’s Policy Centre and shared exclusively with GB News, found 93 per cent of Britons support the deportation of illegal migrants who are guilty of rape and other violent crimes.
Immigration also now tops YouGov’s list of the most important issues facing Britain, with 50 per cent of voters picking the crisis as part of there top three.
Labour MPs had expressed glee after a 28-day period that saw zero migrants embark upon the perilous 21-mile journey from Calais to Kent.
The arrival of 737 migrants took 2025’s total to 40,031, well-above the 36,816 recorded over 12 months in 2024.
However, the figure remains slightly lower than 2022’s record-busting tally of 45,755.
Since coming to power in July 2024, Labour has overseen the arrival of 63,500 small boat migrants, giving Sir Keir a daily average of 120.
Channel crossings have reached almost 200,000 since 2018
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In comparison, Rishi Sunak’s 50,420 arrivals amounted to 82 new arrivals per day.
Meanwhile, the 65,815 migrants who arrived during Boris Johnson’s premiership completed their journeys across 1,140 days, giving the ex-Prime Minister a daily average of 58.
Despite Ms Mahmood the “one-in, one-out” deal with France as a deterrent, the Home Secretary has struggled to stem the tide of arrivals since the accord came into force.
More than 14,500 small boat migrants have crossed the Channel since August 3, with just 153 being returned to France as a result of the arrangement.
Keir Starmer’s small boats record is worse than Rishi Sunak’s and Boris Johnson’s
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Home Office Minister Mike Tapp tried to quell Reform’s concerns by talking up Labour’s removal of 50,000 people who have entered the UK illegally.
However, the figure does not just count deportations, with voluntary removals also being included in the total.
During the year to September 2025, only 9,115 out of 35,052 migrants faced enforced removal involving detention and deportation flights.
Despite facing fury from Reform UK over the small boats crisis, Sir Keir has attempted to shift the blame towards Mr Farage’s door.
More than 700 migrants arrived in the UK yesterday
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Speaking to GB News at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, the Prime Minister labelled the small boats as “Farage boats”.
Sir Keir said: “I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU and he told the country it would make no difference if we left.
“He was wrong about that. These are ‘Farage boats’ coming across the Channel.”
The Prime Minister appears to have been referring to the EU-wide Dublin Convention, which includes a provision to return asylum seekers to the first member state they arrived in.
However, the UK’s final few years of participation in the Dublin Convention would indicate that Britain was a net recipient of asylum seekers.
Shabana Mahmood hailed the ‘one-in, one-out’ deal as a deterrent
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PAHome Office data revealed that 676 asylum seekers were transferred from Britain in 2016 and 2017, while 1,019 illegal migrants were transferred to the UK over the same period.
The problem worsened in 2018, when only 209 out of 5,500 requests for asylum seekers to be returned were completed, while the UK accepted 1,215 migrants.
The figure comes in stark contrast to the 131 who were transferred into the UK in 2015, when 510 asylum seekers had been transferred out.
However, the recent wave of arrivals under Sir Keir’s watch has taken the total number of arrivals since 2018 closer to 200,000.
A 28-day dry spell came to a close yesterday
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PAHome Office data shows 192,918 small boat migrants have arrived on British shores in the past seven years, around the same size as the populations of Bournemouth, Peterborough and Norwich.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The number of small boat crossings are shameful and the British people deserve better.
“This Government is taking action. We have removed almost 50,000 people who were here illegally, and our historic deal with the French means those who arrive on small boats are now being sent back.
“The Home Secretary has announced the most sweeping reforms to tackle illegal migration in decades, removing the incentives that bring illegal migrants to the UK and scaling up the return of those with no right to be here.”