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Scale of French cops' ineptitude laid bare as nearly FOUR times more migrants made it to UK than they managed to stop

Scale of French cops' ineptitude laid bare as nearly FOUR times more migrants made it to UK than they managed to stop

The Irish Sun13 hours ago
NEARLY four times as many small-boat migrants made it to Britain in one recent week than the French ­managed to stop, it emerged yesterday.
A total of 703 crossed
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Shocking new Home Office data shows 2,599 migrants made it to Britain in the week to July 5 (stock picture)
Credit: AFP
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A total of 703 crossed the Channel in the seven days to June 29 — while French cops stopped just 191
Credit: Getty
Shocking new Home Office data shows a further 2,599 migrants made it to Britain in the week to July 5.
That includes 879 people who crossed on June 30 alone, the highest daily figure so far this year.
The damning figures were released days before President
The migrant crisis is believed to top the agenda.
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The UK has already handed France
Last night Tory MPs and Reform UK demanded No10 halt further payments and suspend French fishing rights until crossings stop.
Shadow Home Secretary
'Barely any have been stopped by the French — despite being paid nearly half a billion pounds of our money.
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'We should suspend the fishing deal, which the French really care about, until they actually stop the illegal immigrants.'
Reform UK deputy leader
French cops SLASH small boat & drag it to shore as conveniently placed BBC crew film scene
'They're wasting millions of pounds on deals that have only increased the numbers coming over.
'We shouldn't send another penny to France while they allow this invasion to continue.
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'The solution is simple.
'We need to leave the European Convention on Human Rights and return the boats back to France.'
Figures for the seven days to June 29 showed that 11 attempted crossings were foiled — stopping 191 migrants.
However, last Friday
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Dozens of migrants had to wade back to shore.
The new tactic is understood to be a precursor to wider changes in French maritime law allowing officers to intercept and disable boats in shallow waters before they reach open sea.
Officers on jet skis have also been laying nets designed to jam dinghy propellers.
The moves are aimed at countering so-called 'taxi boats,' where traffickers launch vessels from rivers or canals and pick up migrants offshore to dodge beach patrols.
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President Macron and French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau are expected to discuss the crackdown at this week's UK-France summit before it is formally rolled out later this month.
But it was unclear if a long-awaited 'one in, one out' returns deal will be ready in time.
It would see illegal arrivals sent back to France in exchange for Britain accepting legal asylum seekers.
British and French officials are scrambling to finalise terms before Mr Macron lands in London on Tuesday.
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Sir Keir is pushing to announce the deal at the summit as a 'game-changer' — but opposition from five
The Home Office said: 'We all want to end dangerous small-boat crossings that undermine our border security and put lives at risk.
'Smuggling gangs do not care if the people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay.
'We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.
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'Through international intelligence-sharing under our Border Security Command and tougher legislation in the Borders Bill, we are boosting our ability to identify and dismantle criminal gangs.'
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Bloodthirsty Putin pounding Ukraine with close to 1,000 missiles and kamikaze drones a DAY in brazen defiance of Trump
Bloodthirsty Putin pounding Ukraine with close to 1,000 missiles and kamikaze drones a DAY in brazen defiance of Trump

The Irish Sun

timean hour ago

  • The Irish Sun

Bloodthirsty Putin pounding Ukraine with close to 1,000 missiles and kamikaze drones a DAY in brazen defiance of Trump

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It's not often world leaders display personal frailties the way Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer did
It's not often world leaders display personal frailties the way Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer did

Irish Times

time4 hours ago

  • Irish Times

It's not often world leaders display personal frailties the way Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer did

A chancellor in tears. A prime minister talking openly about the great pressures of his job. It is hard to think of another time when two top leaders of a G7 country put their personal frailties on display in the way the UK's Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer did this week. Reeves did so unwillingly, in the painful glare of the House of Commons , where she struggled to contain her all too visible distress over something that, at the time of writing, remains a mystery. Starmer was more controlled, telling weekend newspaper interviewers his recent bouts of political havoc came as he was facing the firebombing of his London family home , Iran missile strikes and a G7 meeting in Canada within days of a Nato summit in The Hague . Both cases say much about our complicated and often contradictory responses to a leader who shows vulnerability. READ MORE It has long been conventional wisdom that a boss who is prepared to reveal fear, uncertainty or some other form of uselessness is in luck. It's thought they will be more trusted and respected, especially by younger staff who are said to yearn for 'authenticity', and are therefore more valuable to an organisation. It helps that some of the world's best known corporate leaders have endorsed this idea. 'I think one of the perhaps most undervalued characteristics of leadership is vulnerability and asking for help,' former Starbucks boss Howard Schultz told an interviewer in 2017. When former Expedia chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, left the travel group to run Uber , he was lauded for telling Expedia staff he was 'scared' about making the move. There is indeed research suggesting it pays to impart inner wobbles. Yet if it really were obvious, why does the evidence suggest relatively few leaders are willing to own up to any form of weakness? When author Jacob Morgan surveyed 14,000 employees around the world for his 2023 book Leading With Vulnerability, he asked how many of their bosses showed the qualities of a vulnerable leader. Only 16 per cent said their leaders had done anything like asking for help, admitting to mucking up or revealing genuine feelings. I suspect this is because, as with so much else in working life, context is all. There are times when a leader who reveals any form of feebleness will be penalised, like Starmer has been this week. As a BBC interviewer asked one of the prime minister's allies on Wednesday: 'Don't you think he's coming across as terribly weak?' Starmer's problem was timing. Signs of vulnerability can look like damage control, or an excuse, if they come after a leader is already in trouble rather than before. Chief executives who ignore this lesson risk being less appealing to investors, according to a recent paper by academics in the United States. They did a series of experiments to see how people reacted after reading an interview with a fictional tech chief executive before an earnings forecast. In some interviews, the CEO said that although he was good at public speaking: 'When I make a speech, I frequently get nervous – my mouth gets dry, and my hands get sweaty.' In others, he said: 'I'm good at public speaking, and when I make a speech I'm never nervous.' It turned out that if the more vulnerable version of the CEO issued good financial news, people were more inclined to find the forecast credible and rate the company an attractive investment. [ 'Worst of any prime minister': Ten moments that defined Labour's first year in power in the UK Opens in new window ] If he had bad news, it went down badly. But the response was softened if the CEO appeared more vulnerable. Crucially, this softer reaction only came when the boss showed signs of vulnerability before the bad news, not afterwards. This makes sense, and I suspect it explains at least part of the reaction to Starmer this week. Things are more complicated when it comes to Reeves, and not just because there was an actual market sell-off after Starmer initially failed to back his tearful chancellor, prompting investor fears she would be sacked. Her wrenching display of distress also came after the bad news of a party rebellion over reforms she had strongly backed. But no one witnessing the harrowing images of her anguish could imagine they were anything but genuine. We live in an age when emotional honesty is rare and valued, even if, as Reeves has shown, it can also be jolting to watch. – Copyright the Financial Times Limited 2025 How the wealthy are buying up land to avoid inheritance tax Listen | 22:03

Letters: Government should stick to pre-election promise to help struggling students
Letters: Government should stick to pre-election promise to help struggling students

Irish Independent

time5 hours ago

  • Irish Independent

Letters: Government should stick to pre-election promise to help struggling students

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