Braverman’s Channel migrants scheme won’t work

One tries to find grounds for optimism about the resolve and capacity of Her Majesty’s Government in these testing times but there is none to be found in today’s deal with France on Channel migrants.

In fact, the wearily familiar outline of the agreement – yet more UK taxpayers’ money going to the French in return for more beach police patrols, better information-sharing, embedded UK officers working alongside them, blah blah blah – fits very neatly into the failed approach of Boris Johnson and Priti Patel.

Clearly having what Home Secretary Suella Braverman heralded as a ’40 per cent uplift in the number of French gendarmes patrolling the French beaches’ has the potential to reduce the cross-Channel traffic at the margins, and for a while. 

So long as the French honour their side of things, some migrants who would have been able to set off will be caught on beaches, have their dinghies burst and need to try their luck again a few days later.