Fact-Checking Starmer’s Claim That Brexit Created the Small Boats Crisis
Keir Starmer has claimed that Brexit created the small boats crisis and the migrant boats should be called ‘Farage boats’. This is nonsense, says David Barrett in the Mail – and even Oxford University’s Migration Observatory agrees. Here’s an excerpt.
Keir Starmer strayed into fantasy when he claimed Channel migrants come to Britain aboard “Farage boats” and cannot be removed from this country due to Brexit.
The Prime Minister’s claim is preposterous and simply not grounded in fact, as even impartial observers agree.
When he referred to pre-Brexit Britain having “a returns agreement with every country in the EU” he was referencing the Dublin Agreement, which was supposed to facilitate asylum seekers being sent back to other European Union countries through which they had travelled.
But, put simply, the Dublin Agreement did not work.
The number of returns from Britain to the Continent which were achieved under the deal were tiny. A few hundred a year.
Oxford University’s Migration Observatory – one of the most respected organisations in the immigration sphere – said in a report published in August that the number returned under Dublin was “an average of 560 a year between 2008 and 2020”.
The academics’ study added: “The impact of Brexit is likely to have been minimal – the decline in returns predates it.”
In the 12 months before the Brexit referendum, the UK removed 468 people under the Dublin convention.
Contrast that with the number of migrants arriving across the Channel from northern France – which are routinely hundreds and sometimes more than 1,000 a day – and you can see Starmer’s argument already begin to disintegrate.
Dublin clearly offered no solution to a crisis of this magnitude.
Furthermore, because the UK was required to accept migrants from other EU countries as part of the reciprocal deal we were often taking more in than we were getting rid of.
In 2020, the final year Britain was a member of the agreement before transitioning out of the EU, this country took in 882 foreign nationals but removed only 105.
That was despite the Home Office making a further 8,400 requests to EU member states that year which were simply ignored, presumably out of animosity towards Britain over its decision to leave the bloc.
Starmer KC and his big legal brain should know all this.
Worth reading in full.
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Being in the EU would surely make the problem worse, via Free Movement, and via Burden Sharing agreements designed to help Greece and Italy.
Free movement – that is no border/passport control – is ONLY among Schengen Agreement Countries and the UK (nor Irish Republic) was never part of Schengen. This is why British Passport holders have always had to show their passports when travelling from the UK into a Schengen zone Country, but not once already inside the Schengen zone, moving from one Schengen Country to another. And don’t argue with me anybody, between 1977 and 2 000 I was travelling regularly on business to/from/within Europe. Schengen Countries. 1.Austria 2. Belgium 3. Czech Republic 4. Denmark 5. Estonia 6. Finland 7. France 8. Germany 9. Greece 10. Hungary 11. Iceland 12. Italy 13. Latvia 14. Liechtenstein 15. Lithuania 16. Luxembourg 17. Malta 18. Netherlands 19. Norway 20. Poland 21. Portugal 22. Slovakia 23. Slovenia 24. Spain 25. Sweden 26. Switzerland • Non-EU Schengen countries: Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein are not EU members but are part of the Schengen Area through agreements. • EU countries not in Schengen: Ireland and Cyprus are EU members but maintain their own border controls and are not part of the Schengen Area. • Croatia: Joined the Schengen Area on January 1, 2023. • Romania and Bulgaria: As of March 31, 2024, they have partially joined Schengen for air and sea travel, with full integration (including land borders) still pending. • Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City: Not… Read more »
I personally think that tightening up security at the ferry and Chunnel points led many to look for an alternative as they physically couldn’t get through in most cases. The big advantage with the riskier access by boat is that if they are lucky they won’t have to travel the whole way if you’re picked up by the Lifeboat water taxi.
If you’re not, when you get here, you still have all the assistance of wall to wall activists, ensuring you have all the goodies you’ve never paid a penny for.
They still come in the back of trucks but the numbers are dwarfed by the dinghy invasion fleet of scum.
If Starmer-the-Contemptible thinks people will swallow this latest nonsense then he’s simply lost contact with reality.
Did he ever have any contact with reality?
Reality is certainly starting to have contact with him….
The moron’s getting desperate and the lies are getting ever more blatant and ludicrous.
I think he is even beginning to sound warning bells in the Labour Party and I would not be surprised to hear that he is going to retire on ‘medical advice to spend more time with his families.’
Obviously utter nonsense. Starmer is suffering from that same, infectious, pandemic disease which struck hard during “COVID”: the delusion that by merely saying something, unchallenged (because the media are cowed, because people have been programmed against challenging Authoritah by the obvious, tried and tested mechanism of shouting “Bullshit!”), it becomes true. I’ll tell you one thing that was caused by Brexit: the so-called “epidemic” of young people illegally buying vapes, which so exercises Wes Streeting. I have this on good authority. Pre-Brexit, it was harder to smuggle in illegal vapes to the black market, because goods got scanned and inspected at Antwerp or Rotterdam; the infrastructure was long in place there. Post-Brexit, it never occurred to the clowns in charge that making a huge change which would allow us to “control our borders” would require, er… investing in people and equipment to actually control our borders! Word must have spread to smugglers that our customs inspections were woeful, and the rest is history… So, when it is and long has been the law that U18s can’t buy tobacco or vape products, the supply – and lack of actual retail inspections – makes evading this easy. So because the “government” can’t… Read more »
Facts: original Dublin Accord (1990) pre-dates the EU (1992 Maastricht Treaty) and was based on an agreement in 1988 with respect to the Schengen Agreement 1986 – no internal borders between signatories – which has nothing to do with the EU and of which the UK was never part.
However the UK did sign up to the Dublin Agreement and later Dublin Accord as a non-Schengen member.
When the UK left the EU, apparently it also left the Dublin Accord, but why? It is not a requirement to be part of the EU to be a signatory, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are non-EU member states that participate in the Dublin III Regulation.
So another lie from Starmer blaming it on Brexit and Farage. If Dublin III provided a solution, why doesn’t he sign the UK up to it?
Of course the truth is the UK didn’t continue its participation on Brexit because it wasn’t working in the UK’s favour – as the above article indicates.
That man is a brazen liar, and a stupid one, because his lies are so readily exposed.