The first illegal migrants were recorded crossing the English Channel under the new government of Prime Minister Andy Burnham, which was installed by the left-wing Labour Party on Monday.
The migrant crisis appears set to continue, as several boats were seen crossing the English Channel from the beaches of France on Wednesday, according to a report from the Press Association.
Although the Home Office will not publish official statistics on the number of migrants who reached British beaches until Thursday, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party said that its sources indicated that around 100 illegals made the journey.
In remarks provided to Breitbart London, Reform UK Shadow Home Secretary, Zia Yusuf, said: “Migrants have heard the message loud and clear: With Open Borders Burnham in charge, there’s never been a better time to make the crossing.
“Illegal arrivals are set to surpass 13,000 this week, and with Andy Burnham now in Number 10 and four more days of flat weather ahead, the terrifying thing is that numbers are going to increase massively. Only Reform UK has the courage to leave the ECHR and detain and deport all illegal migrants.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage added, “Almost 100 migrants have crossed the English Channel so far today. With Open Borders Burnham now in charge, there has never been a better time to be an illegal migrant.”
Whether or not the new Burnham government will be able to get a handle on illegal immigration may be critical to its success, with the issue having dogged his predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, who oversaw a record 77,183 illegal immigrants arrive in Britain during his tenure.
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen if key changes to the nation’s immigration system pitched by the former Starmer government will come into place.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, broadly seen as being on the right of the left-wing Labour Party on the issue of migration, had called for the time required to qualify for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) to be increased from the current five years to 10.
This would have crucially kept the 1.6 million plus migrants who arrived in the “Boriswave” following Brexit off the welfare rolls until after the next election.
While Mahmood retained her position at the Home Office after the transition to the Burnham government, pro-mass migration advocates in the Labour Party have launched a pressure campaign on the new PM to backtrack on the planned reforms.
Which way Burnham sides could have massive implications for the future of the country, with analysis from Reform UK warning that the cost to the public of giving the Boriswave migrants residency and likely citizenship could amount to £622.5 billion in real terms by 2085.
On the other hand, Farage’s party has called for indefinite leave to remain permanent residency to be scrapped altogether and replaced with an American-style five-year work visa, which, unlike ILR, could be easily withdrawn from any migrants who fail to assimilate or represent a net drain to the system.
Concerningly, new PM Burnham didn’t mention borders, migration, or the boat crisis once in his first speech as Prime Minister on Monday, something Reform already picked on as a bad omen for the future of the country.