Is Boris brave enough to solve the Channel migrant crisis?

The sheer number of useless interventions that have been touted as offering a solution to the cross-Channel migrants crisis is bewildering. Various rounds of talks with France about heightened cooperation to make the route non-viable; paying large sums of money to France to fund beach patrols; appointing a cross-Channel Clandestine Threat Commander; threatening to ‘call in’ the Royal Navy; threatening to turn back overladen boats in the world’s busiest shipping lane; pressuring social media platforms to prevent successful landers from sharing videos of themselves looking happy and triumphant that supposedly create a pull factor for others; even a direct prime ministerial interview to camera promising ‘we will send you back’.

As I have documented on this site before, all these initiatives or pretend initiatives were doomed to failure so long as a central fact was still in place: that somebody landing illegally on the south coast gets to live in Britain with board and lodging paid for and very little prospect of swift removal so long as they lodge a claim for asylum.