Annabelle Sanderson was a Conservative candidate in the 2025 local elections. She previously served as UKIP’s Head of Media.

As many as 150 migrants in a mega-dinghy were intercepted by the Bembridge Lifeboat crew and brought to shore at Portsmouth recently.

It was effectively a new front in the people traffickers’ battle to outflank the pitiful Anglo-French efforts to stop the invasion on Britain’s southern shores.

For years now we’ve been used to seeing first lorries using the Calais to Dover route, then small boats setting off from around Pas de Calais and heading for Kent.

But in recent days we’ve seen something new. People traffickers are using longer routes to get their human cargo to UK shores, safe in the knowledge that under Labour, the chances of them being deported will be close to zero.

The French, we’ve seen, won’t stop them once they’re in the water. In fact, they’ll probably escort them to British waters where they will be picked up and brought to shore, processed and show up in a camp or HMO in your area. After all, Andy wants us all to share like it’s 5 years olds at pass the parcel.

What it shows is that crossing 80 miles of the world’s busiest shipping lane is not a deterrent for people determined to come to this country.

It makes a mockery of the government’s ‘one in, one out’ deal with France; of the billions which has been given to the French – including by previous Conservative governments – to tackle the problem at the French side of the Channel and of Reform’s stunt at its Conference with Jordan Bardella.

The agreement, signed in Birmingham in a migrant-equivalent of one of those cheques on a game show, said that should both Reform and National Rally win power in their respective countries, France would take back migrants.

In terms of a proper deterrent, it’s as worthless as the paper it’s written on.

Over the years I have spent quite a lot of time in towns around Calais and Dunkirk, speaking to migrants, locals, mayors and even the CEO of the Port of Calais.

But one of the most telling conversations I had was with a migrant who clearly said that he would keep trying to reach the UK until he was successful or until he died trying.

“I have to go. This is my dream, I have to go,” he told me.

“I’m don’t (sic) giving up. I’m going with the car, I can take the car. Camion (lorry), I can go with the ship…I can take the bateau. I can take it, no problem. I don’t care about my life. I die, I don’t die. I have to try.”

When he told me that, I believed him. It’s why I have always backed a third party agreement as the only deterrent which will work because it will increase the likelihood of an expensive and dangerous journey being pointless.

Why pay thousands, put yourself and your family at risk only to end up in a totally different continent to the one you were aiming for?

The Channel is not sufficient a deterrent when the benefits – perceived or otherwise – of successfully landing in the UK are so great and the risks of being deported are so low.

Simply deporting people trying to arrive in the UK by small boat back to France does not go far enough.

We saw migrants wait until Labour took office before they attempted their journey to these shores. Why? Because Rwanda, even before it started, was providing a deterrent. We saw migrants travel through Northern Ireland to the Republic in order to avoid deportation to the African country.

Those people in Northern France have not made that journey firstly to Europe, and then across Europe, to be put off by having to try a few times. They’ve paid thousands of pounds. Many of them will have to get to the UK in order to work in the black economy to pay off the cost of their crossing with their families at risk if they do not do so.

The benefits are enormous – but so are the costs of failure.

That is why the only way to tackle the migrant crisis which is now demonstrably causing civil unrest is to have a detain and deport policy – where deportation is not anywhere in Europe.

Labour has made the chances of a second deal with Rwanda difficult, but it’s not impossible. The new role given to Priti Patel, who secured the deal with Rwanda, is one of huge importance not only to the Conservative Party but to the country.

Whether it’s in Dover, Portsmouth, Bicester or Crowborough, the majority of people in this country want an end to the huge numbers of people who are coming to the UK and exploiting our weak borders and our generous welfare system. The promise of NHS treatment, education and housing means our country is being sold as the land of milk and honey.

British people are generous, yes. We have historically been welcoming of people fleeing persecution in their own countries.

But what we are also is sticklers for fairness. What is happening with these tens of thousands of mainly young men coming across the Channel each year upsets that sense of fairness because we see people who are playing the system and pushing Brits down the priority list.

We also see the crimes being committed, and rightly, it worries us. Women should not be put at more risk because of the government’s inability to control our borders or take the action needed to do so. A leaflet telling migrants that rape is bad shows the scale of the cultural problem: no one who needs to be told that rape is a crime should be living here.

Welfare services like housing and health are finite and should be available to those who have a right to be here, who have paid into the system and who aren’t exploiting it.

GP and hospital receptionists should not be immigration officials. Social workers have no power to tell someone who is demonstrably older than 18 that they are not if that person is adamant that they are and has casually thrown their documentation overboard. That means we very likely do, and can, have adult males in schools and care services for minors.

We have a government whose duty it is to protect our borders and prioritise the law abiding, tax paying British public.

In Labour, we have a government too afraid of its own backbenchers to take even moderate action which might reduce the pull factors for migration. Shabana Mahmood’s biggest problem to getting new measures through isn’t the opposition, it’s her own party, ably backed up by the even more left wing Liberal Democrats and Greens.

As with the economy, it will be down to the Conservatives to put in place the measures needed.

We have a duty to do that, not only as the party of grown up politics but also because when we were in power before we failed to do so. We have a lot of making up to do.

But with fresh policies and fresh faces who are prepared to make those tough decisions without capitulating to the special pleading of the left and the complaining from some parts of the media, it can be done. It has to be done.

I’ve heard it myself directly from migrants: France is simply not far enough away.