When it comes to migrants, Britain needs to be more French

Rishi Sunak’s fighting talk as he launched the latest Tory crackdown on illegal Channel migrants this week, with the dramatic words ‘Enough is enough’, ignores the question on many people’s lips: why doesn’t Britain send Channel migrants back to France? That, after all, is precisely what the French have been doing for years with migrants who cross into France from Italy at the border on the Riviera.

So, if it’s all right for France to send back migrants to Ventimiglia, why is it not all right for Britain to send back migrants to Calais?

It is claimed, above all by the French, that intercepting migrant boats in the Channel to take their passengers back to France would endanger lives. But surely not doing so in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes endangers lives even more, as demonstrated by the deaths of four migrants whose boat capsized in the Channel in the small hours of Wednesday morning and by the rescue of 50 migrants in a second similar incident at the same time.