Britain’s border security is dependent on the weather, the Home Secretary said on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show this morning. The Telegraph has more.
Yvette Cooper said the record small boat crossings so far this year reflected the higher number of days than previous years when there was good weather.
“The really unacceptable situation that we’re in is because of the way the criminal gangs have taken hold, our border security ends up being dependent on the weather. We cannot continue like this where the number of calm days affects the number of crossings,” she told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show.
A record 6,632 migrants have reached the UK this year, up from 4,600 at the same point in 2024. It has coincided with an increase in the number of ‘red days’ when the calm weather and sea conditions are conducive to crossings from 17 to 42 compared with the same period in 2024.
Ms Cooper blamed the failure of the previous Conservative government for failing to stop the gangs getting a grip. “We cannot carry on with border security being so dependent on the number of calm days that happen in the Channel. But the reason that is happening is because the criminal gangs still have a deep hold,” she said.
Her comments come ahead of a two-day summit in London this week on organised immigration crime involving ministers, officials and law enforcement agencies from more than 40 countries.
China, the source of many of the engines used in the small boats, and Turkey, where the dinghies are made in backstreet factories, along with source countries from Asia and Africa, are sending delegates to the first major international summit in the UK to tackle the emergency of illegal migration.
“This is a global criminal industry that is worth billions of pounds of exploitation, dangerous crimes that they are committing, and we need that international cooperation in order to bring those gangs down,” said Ms Cooper.
She revealed that the French Government’s Cabinet had now approved that its law enforcement officers can stop migrants’ boats at sea for the first time, lifting a ban that has existed since the first dinghies crossed in 2018.
Ms Cooper said the stop tactics in shallow waters would start later this year. They are expected to be led by an elite 70-strong police unit, known as the Compagnie de Marche, which was deployed during last summer’s Paris Olympics to northern France and are credited with a 25% reduction in attempted crossings.
“For many years, the previous government tried to persuade France to take action in French waters. That hasn’t happened. The French Government Cabinet has changed the rules so they can now intervene in French waters to prevent these dangerous boat crossings. I think that’s really important,” she said.
Ms Cooper said the Government was also prepared to consider “offshoring” schemes for processing migrants’ asylum claims and accommodating failed asylum seekers in ‘return hubs’ in other countries.
She said the UK had talked to Giorgia Meloni’s government in Italy about its plans to process asylum seekers’ claims in camps in Albania, with those rejected refused entry to Italy and those accepted granted the right to enter the country.
“I talked to the Italian interior minister about their arrangements that Italy and Albania have set up. We will always look at what works. So we’ve been very clear about that,” she said.
“But it has to be practical things that will work, not the gimmicks. What we saw was [the conservative government’s] Rwanda scheme spend £700 million on sending four volunteers to Rwanda.”
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Mrs Balls clutching pearls and talking balls. Energy policy, Test cricket, and now immigration policy, all dependent on the weather. We might as well all be practising Druids.
I think this one’s coming for the free NHS dental care. That’s if he ever made it due to having a fire onboard. Ah well, safety is for the birds! lol
https://x.com/VoWalesOfficial/status/1906062231542071618
Darwinism sometimes moves in mysterious ways.
Yes it doesn’t really scream ”highly skilled migrant” to me either. Notice there’s never a shortage of smart phones on board, though, courtesy of the NGOs. Wonder how many safe countries he passed through…Coming to a four-star hotel near you!
What a two-faced treasonous bitch. Talk about rubbing our faces in it. As Jackanories go this is up there with some of Kneel’s best. Talk about bare faced.
Thank goodness the weather was so compliant for the D Day landings otherwise who knows when WW11 might have ended.
Thank goodness people like Cooper were not in charge of the D Day landings. I think we know what would have happened.
And heaven knows what a debacle it would have been if today’s MET with their Supercomputers (and Nut Zero programming) had provided the forecasts.
An often overlooked fact is the weather on the next suitable invasion date. The storm that raged in the Channel destroyed the US Mulberry harbour – allegedly because they had not put it together securely – while thankfully the British one held firm. There is only so long that you could keep the location of the invasion a secret.
Oh for those days of coal-fuelled pea soupers when it used to be reported that ‘the continent was cut off’.
What a surprise. She’s not charging extra for that insight, is she?
With Hone, Vince, Soros, Bloomberg etc and their nice “Season’s Greetings cards”, she won’t need it.
She and the rest of the Uniparty scum are part of thee “Criminal Gangs” she drones on about.
“Laura, just like the previous government, we have absolutely no intention to do anything about illegal migration. But, just to keep the despicable Reform-voting bigots in our population happy, I’m going to furrow my brows and pretend that I listen to their concerns.
If the grumbling gets too loud, we’ll come up with some fake, unenforceable legislation that will then be sabotaged by the human right lawyers and the dinghy crossings will carry on as usual.”
”Nice talking to you, Yvette, we are all on the same page here.”
“OK, Laura, you can turn on the cameras now.”
Yeah they borrowed that script from the Tories.
Interesting all the talk of controlling the supply of engines and boats… while completely ignoring the actual real root cause – people see the UK as a soft touch, because we are. You don’t get many illegal immigrants to places like, say, Russia as an example. Because they are not seen as a soft touch…
Talk of France doing their bit is a joke – they are simply pushing them along to UK, and honestly, I don’t blame the French for doing this – again, they know we are stupid enough to allow it…
Well I do blame them because we pay them. We should ask for our money back then just turn the boats back, of course that will never happen. Don’t think Farage has the stones to do it though.
In the good old days, weren’t there patrol vessels and coastal armaments and cannons on the beaches to deter invaders – such as the armada – from accessing our shores? I don’t recollect reading the deterrents could only be deployed in good weather. Surely modern day Britain should be able to defend our borders and shores from the constant invasion of undesirables?
The weather would be irrelevant if the borders were enforced; criminal migrants were immediately deported and we offered them “free nothing.”
The solutions, which they refuse to implement, prove that the weather has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
They are deliberately importing these criminal migrants.
Pixie Balls Cooper is talking rubbish about Rwanda since her far left mates in the yuman rites industry aided by the far left civil servants pulled out all the stops to prevent the Rwanda deportations so we don’t know how it would of worked but recall that there was a sudden flurry of immigrant scum legging it to Ireland. Then Sushi, scared of Reform, made his electoral blunder of dashing to the polls early when there was a string of good news ahead ending the Rwanda scheme as soon as Two Tier won. Perhaps Kuntsbergcould have asked her how the Syrian refugees she and Fat Ed took in were doing and were they going home now….or maybe she was just lying about that too.