Eleven times Priti Patel vowed to stop the boats

Well, it’s official: Britain is facing a mass migration crisis. On a trip to Washington Priti Patel used the term yesterday as she turned her guns from the French to the EU’s system of open borders instead as ‘they do not have border controls and border checks’. She told reporters there:

There is a mass migration crisis. I’ve said this from day one – from the minute I walked into the Home Office… there isn’t a silver bullet. There’s no point saying, “Well you could just push boats back.” It will not stop it. There all sorts of issues with criminal gangs, smugglers etc.

The admission comes as Patel approaches the two-and-a-half year mark in her post as Home Secretary. During her time there all sorts of promises and briefings have been made about the ways in which she intends to tackle illegal small boats going across the Channel, yet numbers have continued to rise to more than 1,000 a day as of earlier this month.