UK Poll: Confrontation With France Seen as More Effective in Stopping English Channel Migrant Boats

A larger share of Britons believe that curbing the arrival of migrants in small boats on England’s shores via the English Channel would be more effective through confrontation with France than by continuing the current cooperation between the two countries.

These are the findings of an exclusive YouGov poll conducted for the British news network Sky News. This view is particularly prevalent among voters of the two main right-wing parties. According to the data, 57% of those who voted Conservative and 79% of supporters of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party believe that confronting France would produce better results.

Support for this position is significantly lower among those on the left and in the political center. Only 24% of Labour and Liberal Democrat voters, along with 19% of Green voters, see confrontation as the solution. Most supporters of these three parties believe closer cooperation with France would be more beneficial.

The Sky News poll also shows that 40% of Britons mistakenly believe the number of small-boat crossings has risen this year compared with last year. This perception is more widespread among Conservative voters and supporters of Farage’s anti-immigration party.

In fact, as of August, small-boat crossings were at their lowest level since 2021, while they peaked a year later, in 2022. So far, around 16,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel in small boats, a figure 43% lower than a year earlier.

Dissatisfaction with France has grown because London has provided the country with around 1 billion in funding over the years to patrol a relatively small area in northern France. The aim has been to prevent migrants and traffickers from organizing crossings, while the French side has invested in interceptions and patrols. However, these measures do not appear to have curbed crossings to the extent expected by the British.

The centrist Liberal Democrats attribute part of the problem to Brexit. According to them, leaving the European Union has created gaps in access to the EU’s biometric database and given migrants more reasons to undertake these dangerous journeys, knowing that Britain has limited options for returning them to their countries of origin or to EU countries once they reach English shores. Since Brexit, the so-called Dublin Agreement has also ceased to apply. When Britain was part of the EU, it allowed migrants to be returned to the first safe country within the European Union, although the agreement was neither perfect nor fully functional.