Stood amid the sand dunes of northern France two vigilantes filmed themselves unearthing a dinghy engine and wrecking it – to stop at least one people-smuggling gang’s jaunt to the UK. The BBC would stress this ‘footage has not been verified’ – but after disturbing claims of bias at BBC Verify, that just confirms it’s true.
And by posting just one video the two men – from campaign group Raise the Colours who have been hoisting patriotic flags up and down the UK – have proved what we all know. The French police could easily stop the criminal gangs making millions of Euros by dangerously cramming migrants and asylum seekers into inflatables and sending them to Britain – but they don’t want to.
In a quick aside, every day my local village in Greater Manchester is a nightmare if you just want to pop to the shops for a pint of milk.
The moment you stop at a ‘one-hour only’ parking spot two Civil Enforcement Officers (traffic wardens in old money) swoop down like Messerschmitt 109s out of the sun on their scooters and start filming your car and taking pictures to log when your hour started.
More of that later.
In 2023 the UK pledged £500 million over three years to fund increased French law enforcement by 500 officers, surveillance drones, and new detention centres in France to try to disrupt trafficking gangs and prevent crossings.
But still the boats come one after another – with only infrequent pauses when an Atlantic storm churns the Channel to make crossings near impossible.
The two lads from Raise the Colours did not use satellite tracking, undercover surveillance or subterfuge to stop at least one illegal incursion onto our shores – they wandered the sand dunes on a police-empty beach and easily found a partially buried dinghy engine and simply smashed it.
So what the hell are we paying President Macron £500m for?
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has admitted illegal migration is “tearing the country apart”, as she looks to overhaul asylum policy.
According to the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, around 37,000 people were detected crossing the English Channel in small boats in 2024.
Their data shows the majority of those arriving in small boats last year are men over the age of 18 – around 76% – and from 2018-2024 just six countries accounted for 70 percent of all arrivals – Iran (17%), Afghanistan (15%), Iraq (12%), Albania (10%), Syria (9%), and Eritrea (8%).
Last time I checked, Albania wasn’t a war zone.
Albania shares borders with Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Greece, and is not far from Croatia or Italy. Most of those countries are in fact very popular holiday destinations for Brits. Again, certainly not war zones either.
If Albanians are travelling across land to the shores of France they will have to travel through Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy and then the entire length of France to reach Calais.
All these are wealthy developed European countries able to offer shelter themselves – so it’s fair to say Albanians coming to the UK are economic migrants, not asylum seekers.
As of the year ending June 2025, 43,309 people arrived in the UK via small boats, a 38% increase compared to the same period in 2024.
How is that possible? Well how else do you increase ‘ticket sales’ if you are an international criminal who makes money by trafficking people? You advertise.
The government has sought to crackdown on social media advertising the UK under the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill.
But the UK is not a hard sell because we shower all arrivals with – often taxpayer-funded – freebies the moment they step foot on our shores.
We give all migrants on arrival a £45-a-week living allowance for treats and luxuries, accommodation, three meals a day, free new clothes and trendy shoes – while some charities give mobiles, so they can handily call their mates and tell them to come over.
So, yes, the long-term fix to stopping the boats is to cripple the illegal gangs but our attractive free handouts, and Europe’s free movement of people allows EU citizens to live, work, and study in other member states – a cornerstone of the single market – should be addressed too.
Meanwhile, what’s the short-term fix? To literally stop the boats from setting off in the first place by destroying them before anyone steps foot in one.
Raise the Colours have shown that two lads can easily do it but when France wants rid of illegal migrants themselves, why is it in their interest to detain them on their shores a moment longer than they have to?
So first let’s ask for a refund of that £500m. Imagine what we could do with that?
A Civil Enforcement Officer’s (CEOs) salary is around £30,000. That dosh could employ over 16,500 CEOs.
Then let’s reinstate Operation Dynamo – the 1940 mass evacuation of Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk – and send a flotilla of small boats packed with eager traffic wardens to the French beaches with orders to ‘smash the engines’.
If you tell them the boats can only be on the beach for an hour or else, we’ll have crippled a fleet of inflatables by Christmas.
