Migrant Crisis Retreat: Royal Navy to End Role as ‘Expensive Taxi Service’ in English Channel

Royal Navy patrol ship HMS Tyne with her support vessel on patrol in the Channel off the c
Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The Royal Navy will reportedly relinquish its role in managing the migrant boat crisis in the English Channel, which has seen over 20,000 illegals brought ashore in Britain since the start of the year, more than double last year’s figures at this time.

Just months after taking over operational control of the migrant crisis in the English Channel, the Royal Navy has decided to hand back command to the Border Force and the Home Office by the end of the year unless the government that replaces Boris Johnson’s administration intervenes, a report from the Daily Telegraph claimed.

The use of the Navy was questioned from the outset, particularly in light of the branch of the armed services refusing to use its military might to push migrant boats back to the beaches of France rather than escorting them ashore in England.

Speaking to Breitbart London in January, Brexit leader Nigel Farage said that the plan amounted to turning the Navy into nothing more than an “expensive taxi service” if it would not be conducting pushback operations.

“Using the Royal Navy to ferry migrants into Dover is a waste of military resources and a more expensive taxi service than border force,” Farage said at the time.

There have also been concerns raised that the addition of the naval force has only incentivised more migrants to cross as it made it provided an extra layer of safety should one of the flimsy rubber boats used by people smugglers encounter a problem in the busy waterway. Indeed, the number of migrants crossing the Channel has only increased after the Navy was given operational control of the situation, with over 20,000 reaching the UK so far this year, compared to around 11,300 at this point last year.

The former director general of the Border Force, Tony Smith said that he believed it would have made more sense to have empowered the Army rather than the Navy, noting that it has the ability to construct migrant processing centres.

“I can’t see how the Navy was going to do much more than Border Force except that they have bigger vessels and more assets,” he said. “I would say Border Force should retain control, with the Navy giving them assistance.”

The move from the Royal Navy will serve as just another border control failure of the Boris Johnson administration and leave another problem to be solved by his eventual successor, with his other key agenda item, sending illegals to the East African nation of Rwanda, still remaining in limbo awaiting a high court ruling on its legality.

If the next government has any hopes of maintaining the Rwanda policy or indeed of enacting any serious changes to the deportation system, it will likely need to either remove or amend the United Kingdom’s status in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which the country remains bound by despite Brexit, because it is technically a separate institution from the European Union. In June, the Strasbourg-based court controversially intervened at the last minute to block the first flight of illegals to Rwanda, throwing into question the viability of the plan.

Commenting on the growing migrant crisis on Monday, Brexiteer Nigel Farage — who has called for the UK to remove itself entirely from the ECHR — said that ultimately Britain needs to stop blaming others for its failure to deliver on the Brexit promise of taking back control of its borders.

“We’re at 20,000, at the end of the year it could be 50,000, it could be 60,000 who knows. Hotels filling up all over the country, public anger rising and while it’s true that Keir Starmer has no answer to this whatsoever,” he said on GB News.

“The political point here is that Brexit and the 2019 Tory majority were on the back of one very big key policy, taking back control of our borders and we’re being made to look an international laughing stock.”

“Stop blaming everyone else, stop even blaming the criminal gangs, let’s start blaming ourselves.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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