Migrant crisis casts shadow on Starmer-Macron summit
The issue will feature during a state visit to Britain by French President Emmanuel Macron starting Tuesday and new measures to curb the dangerous journeys are expected to be announced on Thursday following talks with Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
More than 21,000 migrants have crossed from northern France to southeast England in rudimentary vessels this year, providing a massive headache for Starmer as the far-right soars in popularity.
Images of overloaded vessels leaving French beaches with law enforcement officers appearing to just watch on exasperate UK politicians and the unforgiving tabloid press.
"We pay for French cops' buggy, 4x4s and drones, but migrants still sailing," complained The Sun newspaper on Wednesday, in a reference to the so-called Sandhurst Treaty.
The 2018 agreement, that runs until 2027, sees Britain finance actions taken in France to stop the migrants.
Starmer, who led his Labour party to a sweeping victory in an election last year following 14 years of Conservative rule, has vowed to "take back control" of Britain's borders.
- One in, one out -
But in the first six months of 2025, there was a 48 percent increase in the number of people arriving on small boats compared to last year, with the government blaming extended dry weather.
The annual record of 45,774 reached in 2022 could be broken this year, which would deal a massive blow to Starmer as Eurosceptic Nigel Farage's Reform UK party leads national polls.
A new border control law going through Britain's parliament would give law enforcement counter-terror style powers to combat people-smuggling gangs.
The UK has also signed agreements with countries on migrant transit routes, including Iraq, Serbia, and Germany.
But Starmer needs strengthened cooperation with France, and key announcements were expected following their talks.
Under pressure from London, Paris is considering tweaking its laws to allow police to intercept migrant boats up to 300 metres from France's shoreline. Currently, French law enforcement only intervene at sea to rescue passengers at risk of drowning.
The two governments are also working on a migrant exchange programme.
A pilot project would see Britain capable of returning to France someone who has crossed the Channel by boat, according to several media sources.
France in exchange could deport an equivalent number of people to Britian, provided they have the right to live there, such as through family reunification.
Paris wants to expand the agreement to the European Union so that readmissions can be shared among several countries.
According to Britain's interior ministry, migrants who crossed the Channel between March 2024 and March 2025 were mainly Afghans, Syrians, Eritreans, Iranians, and Sudanese.
French officials have claimed that Britain attracts migrants because the lack of a national identity card makes it easier to work illegally.
Starmer's government has cracked down on illegal work -- arrests increased by 51 percent from July 2024 to the end of May, compared to the previous year, it says.
- Seeking 'safety' -
But Peter Walsh, a researcher at Oxford University's Migration Observatory, doubts that it is easier to work illegally in Britain than in France.
"You have to demonstrate that you have the right to work. If an employer doesn't carry out those checks, then they can face serious sanctions, fines and imprisonment. That's the same in France and the UK," he told AFP.
Walsh believes the English language and presence of family members in Britain are key attractions, as well as Britain's departure from the European Union.
"If you've claimed asylum in the EU and been refused, you can actually come to the UK and have another shot because we will not know that you've actually been refused in the EU," he said.
Rishan Tsegay, 26, originally from Eritrea, arrived in England in 2015 hidden in the back of a lorry. She fled from Sudan through Libya, Italy and France.
Last year, she became a British citizen and now works as a nurse.
Tsegay says there is a "hostile environment" towards irregular migrants in Britain, saying they were often presented as "criminals" rather than people "contributing to society".
She wants Starmer and Macron to focus on improving safe routes for migrants fleeing war-torn countries as a way to stop them risking the Channel crossings.
"These people come here to seek safety," Tsegay insisted.
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Middle East Eye
22 minutes ago
- Middle East Eye
BBC bias: Attack on watchdog that skewered Gaza coverage is a feeble hit job
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New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Throughout this period one small organisation has played a vital role in calling journalists to account. This is the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), which was set up by the Muslim Council of Britain but is now independent. It has produced three landmark reports that skewer British reporting on Gaza. The first, published early last year, exposed the general collapse in standards across the written and broadcast press in the early months after 7 October. Last spring a second report showed how media outlets largely confined emotive language to Israeli rather than Palestinian victims. Then two weeks ago a third report shone a merciless spotlight on BBC bias. These reports compelled attention. Surprising figures such as Tony Blair's press secretary Alastair Campbell and the acclaimed former Today programme presenter Mishal Husain endorsed the BBC analysis. BBC coverage of Israel's war on Gaza 'systematically biased against Palestinians' Read More » To its considerable credit the BBC dispatched a senior editorial figure, Richard Burgess, to answer questions at the launch. For Israel's cheerleaders in the British media, all this may have been too much to bear. A counter attack on CfMM has been in the offing for months, and yesterday night Policy Exchange struck with an 86-page report. Better known by Fleet Street old-timers as a hatchet job. Policy Exchange calls itself a think tank - but has impeccable media connections on the right of British politics. The founding chairman was Michael Gove, now editor of the pro-Israel Spectator magazine and a former Tory minister. He was succeeded by Charles Moore of the Telegraph, a newspaper whose coverage of Gaza has been skewed. Another former chair was Danny Finkelstein of the Times. David Frum, notorious for coining the phrase 'axis of evil' as George W Bush's speechwriter, is yet another. Andrew Gilligan, a former Telegraph and Sunday Times journalist whose own reporting on British Muslims has been a subject of contention, is a senior fellow, and joint author of this Policy Exchange document. One of us, Peter Oborne, wrote a foreword for the CfMM report on the BBC which Policy Exchange quotes from in its report, as well as speaking at a parliamentary event to mark its launch. We have studied Policy Exchange's report. It is riddled with falsehoods and distortions. Every accusation a confession Andrew Neil, whose journalistic career includes spells as editor at the Sunday Times and as the long-time chairman of The Spectator, claims in the foreword that CfMM is engaged in enforcing a 'tendentious view of Islam and, sometimes, seeking to suppress truthful, factual reporting which happens to contradict that view'. As they say, every accusation is a confession. Neil might as well be describing some of The Spectator's reporting on Muslims during the years he was in charge. The report provides no evidence of CfMM seeking to 'suppress truthful, factual reporting' He asserts that the report proves 'CfMM is part of a wider campaign for legal restrictions on what you can say about Islam, with fundamental implications for free speech". These are sensational claims. They are also absurd. The report provides no evidence of CfMM seeking to 'suppress truthful, factual reporting'. CfMM says it supports the All-Party Parliamentary Group's definition of Islamophobia. The report that accompanied the creation of that definition insisted it was not 'intended to curtail free speech or criticism of Islam as a religion'. Policy Exchange accuses CfMM of saying that 60 percent of news stories about Muslims are Islamophobic. But the organisation has never said that. Policy Exchange further claims that CfMM 'has openly taken the side of intimidating mobs staging banned anti-gay demonstrations outside primary schools'. This is a deeply serious accusation. But there is no record of CfMM endorsing any such demonstrations. Failures of omission More important by far is what Policy Exchange omits. We had expected that the think tank would challenge the central thrust of the CfMM analysis of British media coverage of Gaza. This amounts to a serious body of work exposing one set of reporting rules for Israelis and another for Palestinians. Policy Exchange did not even try. 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The National
4 hours ago
- The National
Macron begins state visit to UK amid migrant crisis
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The National
8 hours ago
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Former pilot flew high in UK politics as Thatcherite
The British Conservative politician Norman Tebbit, who served in Margaret Thatcher 's Cabinet from 1981 to 1987, has died aged 94. Gruesomely, his life is best remembered for a near-death experience. He was pulled from the debris of Brighton's Grand Hotel in 1984 after an IRA bomb tore through a wing of the building. His wife, Margaret, was paralysed from the neck down as a result of the attack. Never one to shy away from voicing divisive opinions, Tebbit forged a reputation as a gritty right-winger and was known to his critics, somewhat unflatteringly, as "the Chingford skinhead" (he was also once described as "the great political street-fighter of his generation"). He was made UK employment secretary in 1981 at a time when more than 2.5 million people were jobless, with claims that 6,000 were joining the dole queue daily. Trade unions organised marches to call attention to the issue and, in reference to some of those rallies turning ugly, Tebbit countered with the famous quote about his grandfather: 'He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work." He incurred more flak with his proposed "cricket test", a scheme to determine how well an immigrant or their descendants had been assimilated on account of which national cricket team they supported – whether it was England or their 'heritage team' – which could then serve as a barometer of Britishness. Tebbit expanded on the idea, saying: 'A large proportion of Britain's Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for? It's an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?" The much-ridiculed cricket test never got off the ground. Only months after the Brexit referendum in 2016, Tebbit wrote in the Daily Telegraph that UK law was facing challenges from a 'rival legal system with its own courts, such as that now represented by the network of Sharia', and that 'Islam challenges our way of life in our own country'. It was difficult to grasp precisely what he was referring to, as the unofficial Sharia councils in Britain had no legal power. But Tebbit was peddling a myth widely held within Conservative circles, to the extent that the prime minister at the time, Theresa May, set up an inquiry into Sharia in Britain. Tebbit's hopeless misunderstanding of Islam became apparent through several crass public comments. Not content with describing the veil as a means of shying away from the rest of the community and "thoroughly rejecting our culture", he also claimed the religion had been "so unreformed since it was created that nowhere in the Muslim world has there been any real advance in science, or art or literature, or technology in the last 500 years". Norman Beresford Tebbit was born on March 29, 1931, in Enfield, north London. His working-class childhood was suffused with a strong academic performance, earning him a place at Edmonton Grammar School. Tebbit was a pilot in the military and the commercial sector, and was also a trade union official. But it was in politics that he was to make his name. In 1970, he was elected to represent Epping then, four years later, Chingford, the Essex seat he would hold for more than 20 years. I am one of those who have it on my conscience that I allowed Mr Blair to become Prime Minister Despite, or perhaps because of, his grounding, Tebbit, with Thatcher 's guidance, sought with the 1982 Trade Union Act to further diminish union power. In days when strikes were rife, the legislation made unions liable for damages stemming from what was deemed illegal protest action. The role of trade and industry secretary beckoned for Tebbit, and subsidies to already struggling industries were cut. Tebbit was nearly killed by the IRA bomb, an attack on numerous Conservative members staying in The Grand Hotel on the Brighton seafront for the 1984 party conference. The horror of his brush with death was captured by photographers and the appalling image of Tebbit in his pyjamas being carried from the scene on a stretcher is an enduring one. He recovered well, however, becoming Conservative Party chairman and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. But reports circulated that relations with Thatcher, to whom he had been very close, had started to fray, not least because he was identified in some quarters as her potential successor as prime minister. These suspicions were scotched, though. Having helped to orchestrate another general election victory in 1987, Tebbit quit the government on a promise to his wife that he would earn enough money from businesses outside the political sphere to help pay for her care, a pledge he duly honoured. The Thatcher-Tebbit fulcrum became evident once more when she offered him the post of education secretary, which he rejected. Still, in 1990, Tebbit showed undaunted support for his prime minister as she faced a leadership challenge, which he refrained from joining, although he later apparently aligned himself with her successor, John Major. Tebbit left the House of Commons for the Lords in 1992, where he was guided by the hidden hand of Thatcher once more, the pair this time reunited in their objection to the Maastricht Treaty that established the EU, the ratification of which they saw as 'treason'. Beginning to voice more and more scepticism of Major, Tebbit hinted he had not pursued the party leadership because he mistakenly believed Major espoused right-wing values – he once said Major had "the mulishness of a weak man with stupidity". The party sank gradually and Tony Blair's "New" Labour took office in 1997. Tebbit's own decision-making subsequently appeared to rankle, as he later explained: "When I look at what happened to the party, I tell myself that perhaps I failed in a duty. I suppose I am one of those who have it on my conscience that I allowed Mr Blair to become prime minister." In the House of Lords, Tebbit, who was made a life peer, remained an entrenched supporter of Thatcherism and disavowed some of the centrist policies of the party with David Cameron at the helm. Tebbit's politics can be rather well summed up by his assertion: 'It is certainly safe, in view of the movement to the right of intellectuals and political thinkers, to pronounce the brain death of socialism.' He retired from the Lords in March 2022. He spent much of his time caring for his wife who, as a wheelchair user, was a vigorous campaigner for access for disabled people. He condensed their highs and lows into an entertaining memoir Upwardly Mobile, in which he expressed deep admiration for his wife and the fortitude she had shown following the Brighton blast, after which she spent two years in hospital. A tiresome theme of Tebbit's book, however, was his bleating about the penury that marred his working life. Tebbit could hardly be said to have been short of money, yet by his own measure apparently he was. He went on to write several more books, with varied success. Margaret Tebbit died in December 2020. The couple had three children, William, John and Alison, all of whom survive their parents.
