It is nearly a year since Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron agreed their ‘ground-breaking’ deal to stop the small boats crisis in the Channel.

Dubbed the ‘one in, one out’ agreement, the scheme was hailed as a triumph by the Prime Minister, and by some of his cheerleaders in the media. ‘A small boats deal with France would be a game-changer for Starmer – and the country,’ proclaimed an editorial in the Independent.

There were one or two more cynical takes on the deal, most of them found in these pages. As I wrote last year: ‘This latest plan to solve the small boats crisis will play out like every other since 2002: a firm handshake, a media fanfare and a complete failure.’

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And so it has proved. During the recent bank holiday weekend, 989 migrants crossed the Channel in 14 boats, taking the total number in 2026 to more than 9,000.

That is the number of detected crossings but the true figure could be........

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