The UK Mega Dinghy
It looks like Andy Burnham has achieved what his predecessors could not. He has found a solution to the small-boats crisis. . .
In the early hours of Monday morning, a 49-foot dinghy carrying 230 illegal immigrants arrived on British shores from France. It is by some margin the largest number of migrants to have arrived in a single vessel. It surpasses by far the previous record of 165, a feat of human trafficking achieved late last month. As many people have already pointed out, the ‘small boats crisis’ may now technically be over, as we enter the era of migrant cruise-liners.
The UK Guardian has more detail on the new trend:
Last year, 106 people were reported to have crossed the Channel in a single dinghy in August and 125 in September. The emergence of mega-dinghies coincided with the announcement in July 2025 of the UK-France “one in, one out” deal, under which a person arriving in the UK from France by small boat can be returned in exchange for another person being brought legally to the UK to claim asylum.
On 12 July this year, a mega-dinghy carrying 128 people arrived in the UK, followed by another carrying 165 people on 23 July. On 4 August, a dinghy carrying 173 people capsized after the engine caught fire. All those onboard are believed to have been rescued, with 11 sustaining minor injuries and three taken to hospital in Boulogne.
The use of mega-dinghies poses an even greater risk to life than smaller vessels, which have recently carried an average of between 50 and 60 passengers, according to NGOs working with asylum seekers crossing the Channel. When small-boat crossings began in 2018, only a handful of people typically travelled in each dinghy.
Each new national humiliation in the UK leads me to undertake a new effort to understand civics there. The first question that popped up for me was, "Where is the UK's Coast Guard?" The answer is that the UK doesn't have one, at least as most contries, including the US, understand the term:
His Majesty's Coastguard (HM Coastguard or HMCG) is the section of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency responsible, through the Secretary of State for Transport to Parliament, for the initiation and co-ordination of all maritime search and rescue (SAR) within the UK Maritime Search and Rescue Region.
. . . His Majesty's Coastguard is a uniformed service that fulfils six of the nine functions required by the International Maritime Organization (IMO):
Hey, six out of nine functions is pretty good, right, at least for a third-world country? The six are Search and Rescue, Pollution Response. Vessel Traffic Management, Maritime Safety, Accident and Disaster Response, and Maritime Security. What's left out?
The other three IMO functions; Customs/Border Control, Fisheries Control and Law Enforcement, are undertaken by the UK Border Force, Marine Management Organisation and local police forces, respectively. . . . HM Coastguard is a civilian agency, unlike other coastguard services around the world, as the duties traditionally associated with a military coastguard service are spread around the UK Civil Service and British Armed Forces.
However, UK efforts to limit migration via dinghies small or large appear to be feckless. According to the House of Commoms Library:
The number of migrants crossing the English Channel has increased in 2021, with the BBC reporting that 12,600 people have made the journey so far this year.
Recent news reports have confirmed that UK Border Force are being trained to use certain “turn around” tactics to intercept and return migrants crossing the Channel.
The Government has said that any plans will be “safe and legal”, but France and other interested parties have suggested such tactics could violate international law.
However,
the UK Government has decided not to implement its plan to use pushback tactics for small boat crossings.
Instead, it appears that migrants who are detected arriving in small boats are taken to processing centers. At that point, about 99% apply for asylum in the UK and are housed in migrant hotel facilities. Most wind up remaining in the UK, whatever the legal disposition of their cases:
Around 2,600 people who had first arrived in the UK by small boat were returned to another country in 2025. In total, there were 7,500 such returns between 2018 and 2025 – around 4% of all arrivals during this period.
It remains unclear how many of the 193,000 people who arrived by small boat between 2018 and 2025 are liable for removal, or are likely to become so in the future. By the end of 2025, around 48,000 small boat arrivals had been refused asylum at the initial decision stage, though some of these individuals will eventually be granted status on appeal and hence be able to remain in the UK. Another 33,000 had their asylum application withdrawn or administratively decided.
For now, the UK appears to lack the political will to control its borders, which has had the effect of institutionalizing smuggling networks:
Smuggling groups have become larger and increasingly professionalised in recent years, and were able to capitalise on their initial experience as enforcement measures were progressively tightened. There is some evidence that the price of crossing the Channel declined over time, although estimates are uncertain and can vary significantly. According to some sources, prices had fallen from around €14,000 in 2018 to well under €4,000 by 2024. Media investigations indicated prices of around €1,500 in early 2026.
There won't be another national election in the UK until 2029.