Farage: Burnham will give big cheques to the EU which won’t stop the boats

Nigel Farage has predicted that the government will promise to pay into EU schemes on migration which won’t achieve the target of stopping small boats crossing the Channel.

Speaking on GB News, he said: “Yesterday we passed a milestone. Yes, over 10,000 people have crossed the English Channel since Keir Starmer left the premiership and Andy Burnham took over.

“Now, back in July, just right at the end of his premiership, Starmer promised us a big new deal.

“So what happened? One in, one out. This is going to be a marvellous new scheme. Will we have a look at the scores on the doors? We will see that almost nothing was achieved at all. Pretty much a score draw.

“And interestingly, 50% of those we try to send back to France, the French reject it. Now bear in mind, we’ve paid the French a thick end of a billion pounds over the course of the last few years to stop people coming to Britain.

“But none of this is good enough because there is an EU-UK summit coming up on the 20th of this month, at which the European Union itself is now saying Britain must make a financial contribution to the European Union towards its Channel action plan.

“Because basically, if you’re in the European Union, you can’t, as a country, decide these things. It’s a European Union competency, and that’s basically what they are saying.

“The Prime Minister is going to go next week with no mandate at all, and start paying big cheques across to the European Union, which will achieve nothing.

“What they might do is to say, actually, now you’re part of this. You have some of the ones that have come across the Mediterranean. It’s called burden sharing. I don’t think anything positive will come of this at all.

“But also, the French have an impossible job. Let’s be fair. Because if you go from Gravelines up on the Belgian border down to Utah beach, basically, you’re looking at over 200 miles of coast.”