Keir Starmer<\/a> and Emmanuel Macron faced fresh fury over the French police\u2019s low interception rate.<\/p>\nShocking analysis revealed two thirds of crossings are successful, prompting calls for the Prime Minister to stop paying Paris.<\/p>\n
New figures claim French authorities stopped 22,476 migrants from crossing to the UK.<\/p>\n
But the vast majority of these are believed to be linked to dinghies sinking, their engines breaking down, overcrowding leading to chaos on the boats and bad weather.<\/p>\n
Reform\u2019s Zia Yusuf warned the French President is \u201claughing at us\u201d as migrants cross the Channel at \u201crecord pace\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cIt\u2019s ridiculous, but equally they are looking out for French interests.<\/p>\n
\u201cMacron is laughing at us because France has taken \u00a3700million of British taxpayers\u2019 money with the express goal of stopping the boats.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s happened? The boats are coming at a record pace. It\u2019s a joke. France is laughing at us.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, I can condemn Macron. But, here\u2019s the point, it\u2019s British political leaders that are allowing this insane stuff to happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy anger, and I think a lot of the anger of the British people, is directed at British politicians, frankly, who have betrayed their own people.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Migrants](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/6765912.jpg\" "\\"Migrants")
<\/p>\n
Illegal migrants queue to be processed after arriving in the UK (Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n
![\"BRITIAN-FRANCE-CHANNEL-MIGRANTS-MIGRATION\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/6765917.jpg\" "\\"BRITIAN-FRANCE-CHANNEL-MIGRANTS-MIGRATION\\"")
<\/p>\n
Migrants waiting to board a bus (Image: AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp added: \u201cIt is pathetic the French are allowing two-thirds of illegal immigrants to embark.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast summer, I witnessed French police ushering illegal immigrants on to a bus headed towards the departure points.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should not pay any more unless they start to take effective action.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey should intercept all the boats near the French shore, which can easily and safely be done.\u201d<\/p>\n
British and French officials have repeatedly disagreed over plans to intercept boats in the Channel.<\/p>\n
France has finally given police officers to stop dinghies in the water. But they have only done so once.<\/p>\n
And Border Force chiefs drew up plans to push migrant boats back.<\/p>\n
Marked ‘Official Sensitive’, they revealed how a Border Force vessel could draw up alongside the migrant vessel before knocking the front portion of it using tactical contact to slowly turn it around whilst the engine was running.<\/p>\n
This would be repeated until the dinghy was heading back into French territorial waters.<\/p>\n
And Border Force drew up plans for two vessels to box a migrant boat in on both sides and guide it back towards French territorial waters.<\/p>\n
This would have been implemented if the asylum seekers refused to comply with requests to turn around.<\/p>\n
But Mr Darmanin decided it was \u201ccounter to their obligations and our obligations around safety of life at sea\u201d, Mr O\u2019Mahoney said. And it seemingly led to even more anger from Paris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boats carrying a number of people believed to be migrants have arrived at Dover (Image: Getty) Chaos in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[26291,418,3104,287,161652,59,57,58,2053,161651,50,56,161653,54,55],"class_list":["post-444973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-channel-crisis","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-english-channel","tag-english-channel-migrant-crossings","tag-french-interception","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-labour-party","tag-migrant-crossings","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-uk-france-relations","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Border](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/migrants-3-6765775.jpg\" "\\"Border")
<\/p>\n![\"Migrants](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/6765922.jpg\" "\\"Migrants")
<\/p>\n