Small boats carrying asylum-seekers continue to cross the English Channel, with numbers for this year already surpassing the 2024 total. In a farcical twist, one migrant, removed to France with much fanfare under the government’s flagship “one in, one out” deterrent scheme, arrived back on U.K. shores by small boat less than a month after being deported.
More damaging still, on Friday an asylum-seeker jailed for sexually assaulting a teenager — and whose crimes sparked a wave of protests in the U.K. over the summer — was mistakenly released from prison, prompting a weekend manhunt. He was eventually re-arrested on Sunday morning — but not before torrid headlines and a declaration from Farage that Britain is “broken.”
It’s been “deeply damaging,” a Labour MP in a marginal seat, who had been door-knocking over the weekend, said of the latest events.
It is “playing into the hands of Reform that Britain is ungovernable by traditional parties,” the MP, granted anonymity to speak candidly, added.
Unlike some of his centrist contemporaries in Europe battling populist insurgents, Starmer should be ascendant. He has a commanding House of Commons majority, and isn’t due to face an election until 2029.
But events last week are “grist to the mill” to Reform’s argument that the British state is “totally dysfunctional,” Reform MP Danny Kruger, who defected to Farage’s outfit from the Tories and its leading its preparations for the prisons system, said. Kruger will make a speech Tuesday and told POLITICO he is calling for “serious surgery on the system.”