British control in France is needed to bring down number of Channel-crossing migrants and tackle people-smuggling gangs
FOR two years Priti Patel watched aghast as the numbers of Channel-crossing migrants rose as fast as the £80million she handed to France to tackle them disappeared down Le Plughole.
And they are still coming — another 1,065 on Sunday taking the total to nearly 35,000 this year.
Breakthrough talks last week hinted at a new level of cooperation between the two countries but new Home Secretary Suella Braverman rightly doesn’t want to chuck another £50million at the French without conditions.
Chief among them is a demand to send our own border officials to patrol French beaches to help tackle the people-smuggling gangs.
Ms Braverman knows that without an element of British control we won’t ever see value for money from the slippery French. She must stick to her guns.
Meanwhile, extraordinary figures from the Home Office yesterday showed 34,000 Nigerian migrants on student visas brought nearly 32,000 family members with them last year.
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Add them to the channel-crossers and you have the equivalent of the population of Bath — in just 12 months.
How can our overloaded public services possibly cope?
Fear East
THE folly of successive British governments spending the past two decades cosying up to China is clearer than ever.
Yesterday the head of GCHQ, Sir Jeremy Fleming, said Beijing posed a significant threat to the world.
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And today this newspaper reveals China will be officially categorised as a “threat” in a new strategic review of Britain’s enemies. Senior Tory and long-time critic Iain Duncan Smith declared it “long overdue”.
Britain can be proud it is leading Nato’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while other countries like Germany are left to rue their reliance on Moscow.
But after years of allowing China access to almost every corner of our economy and infrastructure, we may yet face a few regrets of our own.
Fatal flaw
AMONG the vehicles caught in traffic jams caused by Just Stop Oil protests yesterday were an ambulance and a fire engine.
Which means that while a handful of middle-class, middle-aged anarchists sat in the road warning of Liz Truss’s “genocidal death project”, real people were being left in mortal danger.
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As usual, it took several hours for police to finally arrest 28 idiots.
We ask the climate loons: what is more of a selfish threat to your fellow human?
Getting behind the wheel of a car to go to work and earn money for your family? Or blocking the emergency services?