In late December 2018, the home secretary, Sajid Javid, rushed back from a family trip to South Africa to deal with a “major incident”, the spike in the number of migrants seeking to enter the UK by boat — 220 had tried to cross the English Channel in eight weeks. Javid was under pressure to deploy the Royal Navy to avoid what one MP labelled a “catastrophe”.
In the past eight weeks, 15,246 people have been detected crossing the world’s busiest shipping lane in small boats. Once deemed too perilous a route to attempt, compared with the relative safety of a lorry or ferry, it has rapidly become one of the main thoroughfares for so-called “irregular” migration to Britain.
The numbers trying have been undeterred