UK Poll: Confrontation with France Seen as More Effective in Stopping Small Boats in the English Channel

A larger share of Britons believe that curbing the arrival of migrants in small boats on the English coast 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 poll conducted by YouGov for the British news network Sky News. This view is particularly supported by 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.

Among voters on the left and in the center, support for this position is significantly lower. Only 24% of Labour and Liberal Democrat voters, as well as 19% of Green voters, see confrontation as the solution. Most supporters of these three parties believe that 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 increased 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 Britons expect.

The centrist Liberal Democrats attribute part of the problem to Brexit. They say leaving the European Union has created gaps in access to the EU’s biometric database and given migrants more reason 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 the English coast. Since Brexit, the so-called Dublin Agreement no longer applies either. 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 operational.