Lord Hermer has said the Tories and Reform UK would “let migrants drown” in the Channel through their plans to ditch human rights laws and deport all illegal arrivals. The Telegraph has more.
The Attorney General said that the only way the Government would end the small boats crisis was through international co-operation to crack down on people smugglers.
Speaking on the BBC, he claimed Labour was “starting to be pretty effective in dealing with the boats” because of the co-operation, which relied on Britain sticking with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and Council of Europe.
“What Reform and the Tories have to answer is, well, what would you do? You wouldn’t be able to have deals with France and Germany because they are contingent upon being members of it [The Council of Europe],” Lord Hermer told Nick Robinson’s Political Thinking podcast.
In response to a suggestion that the two parties would “round people up on the beaches and send them somewhere else”, Lord Hermer said: “Well, I think what they mean by that is they let people drown in the water. And that is not a British way to deal with it. That is not commensurate with our values.
“The way to deal with it is the way we’ve been dealing with it. And we’re going to carry on rolling out further agreements, which is co-operation with the states through which people are travelling, through which people are launching boats. And we do that through our membership of the Council of Europe.”
Asked whether he was “not seriously saying Kemi Badenoch wants to drown migrants”, Lord Hermer replied: “No, no. I think if you hear some of the voices to the Right of Kemi Badenoch, some of the language and some of the rhetoric is deeply, deeply concerning, the kind of disregard for the humanity of people.”
Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, said of the Attorney General’s comments: “It is a disgraceful slur to suggest that those wanting to end illegal small boat immigration are prepared to see migrants drown.
“The fact is that human rights lawyers like Hermer and Starmer are part of the problem – because they think the often tenuous human rights claims of illegal immigrants are more important than protecting our border.
“Let’s not forget, the illegal immigrants are leaving France – a safe country. Small boat crossings are 45% up since the election and 73,000 have crossed under Starmer – more than under any other Prime Minister. And Hermer has the cheek to suggest this is acceptable. He is out of touch and a danger to our border security.
“We need to leave the ECHR so that all illegal immigrants can be deported within a week of arrival. Then the crossings would soon stop. But Hermer and his Labour allies are not willing to do this. So the illegal immigrants will continue to flood in under Labour.”
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s Home Affairs Spokesman, said: “Richard Hermer used lawfare to hound British troops who had done nothing wrong. … He is a traitor to his country. I have no interest in anything he has to say. Reform will secure our border and deport all illegal migrants.”
Worth reading in full.
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Is he campaigning for Reform and the Tories?
Queer Stalin is running the campaign.
Hermer with the rest of the Labour Party are just following the party’s line.
So in effect, yes. But Queer Stalin is the main asset for Reform etc.
And what’s wrong with that?
An absolutely disgusting smear by this repulsive, despicable individual.
If they didn’t get in the boats on a safe beach in a safe country, there would be zero percent chance of them drowning. Compel the French to enforce what we pay them for and make the reasons to come here unattractive, and watch the percentage of people willing to risk their lives for it dwindle to zero.
Most people in the UK do not realise that the French provide nothing for these migrants, routinely bulldoze their shanty towns in and around Calais and confiscate all their possessions.
So its not just ‘pull-factors’ but the French ‘push-factors’.
Now the same ECHR laws apply in France as in the UK, so how is it the treatment of illegal migrants is so different.
Have an up-vote but: ECHR is not law. It’s a convention. it is applied as part of law by the local courts or if they don’t interpret it to the satisfaction of the complainants, by the European Court of Human Rights. I’d like to see stats about how often French courts’ decisions are referred ‘up’ to the ECtHR as compared with those of English courts. My guess is that English courts fall over themselves to interpret the convention as broadly as possible while the French courts effectively shrug and say ‘Meh. Take it to the ECtHR if you want and can afford to’.
Sorry but that is not right.
Most of the ECHR articles bar one was made part of UK law under the Human Rights Act so they are part of UK law.
Unlike much of Europe, the UK operates a Common Law system whereas many European countries operate a Roman Law codified system.
The UK distinction between a convention – which is an international law agreement between contracting states – and legislation passed by Parliament is that conventions are not directly enforceable under UK law unless enacted by Parliament.
ECHR has constitutional or quasi-constitutional status in Austria, and in varying forms several post-communist constitutions give treaties/human-rights treaties high rank, e.g. Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia. Domestic courts can usually apply Convention rights as superior or specially protected norms, though the exact hierarchy varies.
ECHR is directly applicable or given supra-legislative treaty status in these countries – commonly Belgium, Cyprus, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain. Individuals can generally invoke ECHR rights before domestic courts, often with priority over ordinary legislation.
ECHR incorporated by statute in traditionally more dualist systems such as Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Sweden. The ECHR is enforceable domestically because national… Read more »
If his Lordship pleases, we’ve been in the ECHR for years. So how come it hasn’t helped us get rid of the invaders? And are we not paying France to stop them leaving the beaches?
Would it not be pertinent to ask Lord Hermeneutics what his intentions are, given the figures above?
You make your choice, you take the consequences, and France gleefully push them our way, after coming through the rest of Europe, its not the British way to have their country overun by these undocumented parasites, its the Govs plan, and it is going to backfire!.
They’ve got my vote!
it is difficult to discern who is the ventriloquist’s dummy. Is it Starmer or Hermer?
Here is a quote from Lord Hermer “… Let Migrants Drown in Channel”.
Joking aside, all the UK government needs to do is ensure they are picked up and taken back to France.
1) it ‘rescues them’
2) it is a deterrent
3) no need for Rwanda
4) France is a ‘safe’ country
5) it returns them to the country they came from
6) the problem is EU free movement which allows them to travel to France in the first place.
7) no human rights issues arise – there is no human right to travel to the UK on rubber boats to enter the country illegally.
Apparently Hermer has been letting migrants drown in the oceans North of Australia, there too a lots of migrants crossing water that has nothing to do with us. He should do something about that!
Labour HAS let migrants drown in the channel.
They are equally culpable with the Tories and lib Dems for this utter mess.
Tony Abbott didn’t stop the invasion of Australia by signing up to the ECHR – or “international cooperation.”
He did it by making it impossible for a criminal migrant to ever be allowed to stay in Australia, let alone become an Australian citizen.
His is the example we should copy.
That’s like a castle under attack, with all the inhabitants rich & poor fighting side-by-side to defend the castle walls and gate from The Invading Horde … then Traitor Hermer emerges from where he’s been hiding the whole time, sipping the last of the stored wine … he shrieks at the Commanding Officer “You can’t let them drown in the moat! You must open the gate and bring them all in!”
The Commanding Officer, sword in hand, looks at him and says, “You’re right! Here, lads, help this lawyer who’s volunteered to help ’em swim across and destroy us all!”
“Please, sir, there’s no rope long enough to reach the moat from here on the parapet! Only this one about 3 feet long!”
“That’ll do … he can drop the rest of the way”… … … … … … … … … (splash…)
Woke communists like Hermer the white people Harmer, don’t realise how much we despise them. Is that a hate crime?
White men in positions of leadership. Terrible, isn’t it?🤷♀️
Irony is an English speciality, isn’t it? 🫤
No.
Irony’s roots trace back to ancient Greece, where it described a stock comic character called the eiron who pretended to be less intelligent than he was to outwit opponents.
Sadly for the Labour Party, they don’t have to pretend. And they instead out-twit.
Oh no! Now you’ve suggested a new one! You’re guilty of Despise Crime.
It’s called a deterrent, you blithering fool judge.
A ex-friend of mine made the same “accusation” at me, round about 10 years ago. I’ve not seen her since.
I wonder what would be the outcome if you posed the question in a survey ‘do you worry about illegal immigrants drowning in The Channel?’
Only if loads of bodies being washed up on the South Coast damages the tourist industry.
These guys in Westminster must be ingesting serious quantities of harmful chemicals.
At least 200 illegal migrants are estimated to have died or gone missing while attempting to cross the English Channel already. Given the covert nature of these wholly illegal crossings, that is likely to be a serious underestimate. There are, apparently, many more and much fatter sharks in the English Channel than there ever used to be!
The only way to end the carnage is to stop the crossings.
The only way to do that is, first off, to leave the ECHR.
The crossing are no longer covert, last year only one boat load of illegals arrived in the UK without having been detected crossing the Channel. The smuggling gangs give the illegals a phone number for the French coastguard who pick them up a couple of miles offshore give them a lift to British waters and hand the over to the Border Force taxi service.
There may well HAVE been quite a lot of deaths before the whole operation became as sophisticated and well run as it is now but last year there were probably less than 20 and as far as I know there’s only been 2 so far this year when an outboard motor caught fire.
It’s the Med where most of the drownings happen because North African countries don’t use their coast guard as a taxi service. There’s been quite a few deaths when people try to cross from Turkey to Greece because Turkish coastguard vessels have “accidently” collided with migrant boats, give the skipper a medal. When one of the coastguard skippers was questioned by accident investigators he said “The other boat was being driven very erratically and I had to swerve several times before I hit… Read more »
I admire your confidence.
It is not shared by the parliamentary briefing paper of 20 May 2026:
‘…we have no way of knowing the number that arrive undetected. For these reasons, comparisons between detection figures for different entry methods should be made with caution.
Changes in the number of detections may not always reflect changes in the number of people attempting to enter the UK via unauthorised routes; they may also be due to operational factors, such as changes in levels of surveillance and enforcement activity’
There is a vague estimate of over one million ‘unrecorded’ individuals in Britain. Whatever the truth of the matter, the fact remains that the sharks in the channel are a great deal fatter and more numerous than ever before…and people like Hermer have blood on their hands..
‘The porbeagle (Lamna nasus) is a belligerent apex predator, often mistaken for its more fearsome cousin, the great white shark…Many are surprised that despite the global decline of large pelagic elasmobranchs, these species have experienced a remarkable resurgence in the western English Channel over the past decade’
Aug 2024
Doesn’t that assume that the sea currents always head towards the English shore, which can’t be true?
A lot of the unrecorded individuals will be people who arrived legally with a work/study visa and stayed here after the visa expired. If they disappear into the black economy and don’t pay tax or claim benefits theRE’ll be no record of them other than the fact they arrived and haven’t left.
It’s well known that people from certain countries, Pakistan is top of the list, are more likely to overstay legal visas so there should be no more visas given to people from these countries, assuming we actually need foreign workers, get the millions of young people on long term sickness benefits for anxiety, ADHD etc into work, or students to financially support 2nd/3rd rate universities
Hermer isn’t making any sense. Nobody’s going to drown because he would have been treated in a certain way if he hadn’t drowned earlier. So-called migrants sometimes drown while trying to cross over into England illegally and the reason they drown is because they tried to do this. This, in turn, they did because policy choices by past and current British government made this such an attractive proposition for them that they’re willing to risk their lives for it. Insofar as someone’s morally responsible for “migrants drowning in the channel”, it’s Hermer and Starmer et cetera themselves.
Every time this man opens his mouth, and says something. He never fails to disappoint.
Lord Hermer needs to put on his thinking cap. People are drowning because they are jumping into boats to cross the channel. If the boats are stopped then nobody would drown. Or am I missing something here?
Anyone know how many illegals Hermer is accommodating in his property or vicinity?
The creature is a piece of barely human detritus. He should be imprisoned for treason.
They are getting desperate. I wonder what would happen if Farage responded “So what?”.
Interesting use of language anyway: “let them drown”. Generally people in danger of drowning that one considers “saving” are people who are engaged in some legitimate activity, not people trying to invade your country.
A humane way of stopping illegal immigrants would be to scuttle their boats in French waters, I’m sure underwater drones to do this could be invented in less than 6 months, so they have a chance of being rescued then refuse to allow the French to transfer them to Border Force taxis
That’s a matter for the French. We need to make the UK much less attractive for illegals and that is the single biggest change that needs to be made – almost all of them need to be sent away somewhere in short order having been detained in basic accommodation for the minimum time possible. I don’t think being humane is a priority when what is at stake is national survival. They are invaders. If someone is drowning in front of you, maybe save them, but I don’t think we should be patrolling to find sinking boats or scanning for distress calls. In reality I doubt that many of the boats need “saving”.
Tents in a barbed wire encampment. Tear gas and tazers for any of them that complain and cause trouble. Basic (non halal) food and water. Second hand clothes from oxfam.
DNA swabs, photos and fingerprints of all of them. Those characteristics then need to be banned forever from coming to the UK and from applying for assylum.
If they reveal where they came from, ban all travel from that country by its people, and no aid or trade, until they take them back.
Something along those lines, yes
Secure detention, no treats, no possibility of remaining. No phone, medical treatment limited to emergency care.
Its really not conplicated.
Guard dogs with sharp teeth and little restraint.
Bukele-style camps would resolve the issue. When they have had enough let them put their hand up and see whether their country of origin will take them back.
If ‘we’ were to simply stop turning up, and the French continued to tow them into the middle of the channel to drown, the blame would lie with the French, not us, surely?
And, I’m still waiting to find out who, exactly, is funding the RNLI’s costs of their almost daily operations… they were on their uppers a year or two ago.
If you compare the number of drownings with the number of successful landfalls, it’s obvious that the claims of a dangerous Channel crossing are completely spurious. The French hand out lifesaving jackets, their vessels shadow the inflatables and the Border Force and RNLI are ready and waiting at the mid line to pick up the illegals and bring them to Dover. Note how the BF boats now have perspex canopies to shield their passengers from bad weather.
Maybe – but if what you say is true about the end to end escort (I have no idea but no reason to doubt you) then surely the key measure is how often the French and especially the UK authorities have to intervene to provide assistance. I presume if questioned, Hermer would claim that this support would be withdrawn and that it would put lives in danger. I’ve no idea whether this is true or not, and I am not sure if Hermer knows either – I think it’s just a handy smear. If pressed hard enough he could probably get his assistants to cook up something that sounds plausible.
I can’t say I’ve given the mechanics of crossing the water much thought as I think the much more effective and efficient approach is to make it unattractive to be here for them, though I don’t personally think we’re under any great moral obligation to see out these boats and help them.
Once Labour has finished wrecking our economy and society the UK will be much less attractive. The traffic will all be in the opposite direction.
That might happen eventually but it is taking far too long. We’re still too good at things.
It is already happening.
But it is people with money who are going.
Its why Labour are claiming success with net migration – the huge numbers leaving reduce the net inward migration figure.
For the mathematically challenged net migration = total immigration minus total emmigration or more simply = those coming in minus those leaving.
Neat idea.
I’m sure the Ukrainians have the technology, after all, we’re sending them loads of weaponry, isn’t it time they started sending us some?
Hermer ‘claimed Labour was “starting to be pretty effective in dealing with the boats”…’
A claim so entirely unsupported by evidence could only be made by someone out of touch with reality.
He’s just a liar
I suspect he’s a lawyer. That’s something very similar but not quite the same.
Splitting hairs.
Effective just means they’re efficiently accomplishing whatever they want to accomplish. It doesn’t mean they want to end channel crossings by people seeking to enter Britain illegally.
“Reform and Tories Would Let Migrants Drown in Channel”…as if that’s a bad thing!
That’s what I was thinking!
I’d like to see his head on a spike.
Does that make me a bad dog?
Nope, you get a treat 🐕
If someone chooses to try to cross a stretch of often-stormy water in an unsuitable vessel and subsequently founders with it and drowns then it should mean that others decide not to chance their luck.
Natural selection in action.
I don’t think the Labour Party is checking the sea worthiness of the migrant vessels, or laying out safe transport for them either.
So rather than confirming this man’s prejudice, wouldn’t it be better to question what exactly he thinks Reform or Conservatives would do differently to Labour in terms of “letting them drown”?
Recent events suggest that Our Beloved Leaders aren’t even very bothered about how “seaworthy” the ships of the Royal Navy are.
What do you mean? Stop this negativity about our wonderful Whitehall civil servants in the MoD.
All of our ships are perfectly serviceable and battle-ready in between repairs.
Putin, the IRGC and North Korea have all promised Starmer never to attack when our wonderful Royal Navy ships are undergoing maintenance.
I saw him on the steps of a plane coming back from those overseas visits waving a bit of white paper saying he has their signed agreement.
Apparently he read about someone else doing something similar with Adolf Hitler – now who was that? Neville Chamberlain?
Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler’s Joint Resolution “Never to Go to War with One Another Again” (September 30, 1938)
That went well according to Starmer.
Its a disgrace to even make such a suggestion, even if its not actually serious, he should be removed for making such divisive statements in his role.
The solution is really quite simple, anyone entering the country through any illegal means, instantly negates any claim of asylum, and they will be removed.
Longer term, this country needs to remove all the ridiculous incentives we offer, to stop making the UK such an attractive destination.
We should not totally abandon all humanity, but if someone is already in a “safe” country, they should have a bloody good reason to be even considered entry into the UK – and only then through application through the safe nation they currently reside within, and then via only legal means, with the understanding the benefits gravy train has gone!
Contribute and integrate, or you don’t get in, and have at least 5 years (maybe 10) probation, you break the law, you’re out – meaning criminal offences, not something like speeding or parking fines, which are NOT crimes, and we are all at risk of.