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WATCH: Eamonn Holmes declares migrant deal with France will 'not stop the boats'
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Jul 13, 2025
Eamonn Holmes has delivered his scathing verdict on Sir Keir Starmer's migrant deal with France.Delivering his verdict on the UK's migrant exchange deal, the People's Channel host hit out at the agreement, declaring that it "isn't going to fix the problem".FULL STORY HERE.
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Leading the news this morning, politics
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Keir Starmer facing criticism this morning over what's being branded a surrender deal with France
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Yeah, the Prime Minister is promising a new era of cooperation after signing that migration deal with President Macron
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But the Tories are saying, well, it's not just the Tories, nearly everybody's saying, the agreement is just about photo opportunities
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and there's really very little substance and some are warning that it literally will not stop a single vote
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Now, there's not a lot of people that are going to really disagree or argue with that. We can reveal that more than 1,200 migrants crossed the Channel since that deal was signed on Thursday
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That's 1,200 since Thursday, 300 more attempting the crossing yesterday morning, and the Prime Minister's hitting back, accusing the Conservatives of insulting the French
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Sorry, I'm sort of laughing. Yeah, well, me too, the very idea. I mean, as if his..
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Starmer's popularity is lower than Boris Johnson's ever was. And how long can he go on
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How long can he go on with this? But anyway... Anyway, we mustn't insult the French
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No, we mustn't do that. Joining us now, we'll let him insult the French, political commentator John Oxley
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John, the whole thing, the point I'm really trying to make is, and this is what disgusts me, and I mean disgusts me with Starmer
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I believe it's all about the stage with him. It's all about the show
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It's all about hugging, which I can't stand, hugging Macron. And is it all about a global image rather than fixing the problem I think you know to be fair to Starmer there are moves in here that are going towards fixing the problem
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Why is he going to fix the problem what he's come up with this week? You can't sit and say, oh, that's it solved
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It's not it solved at all. As you said, the scale of the problem is just huge
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But what we've seen over the last five or ten years as this has been bubbling up is repeated governments
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have failed to do anything to stem the increases in migrants. The only thing that seems to change it
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is how good the weather across the channel is. And so all of these deals, the problem is you need some cooperation
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you need more cooperation, but anything you can do is so small
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compared with the numbers that are coming across. And ultimately, the position is the French don't want these people
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sat around on their beaches. they have every incentive to let them get across to become our problem
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And so it's very hard to do a deal that deals with it substantially
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Yeah, and all the while, it's like we're being gaslit, isn't it
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That we're being told that we've done this deal with France and it's going to make a difference
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and we've been paying them all this money anyway. We see one little sequence of them stabbing a boat to deflate it
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And we're expected to believe that this is making a difference. Nothing seems to be making
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a difference. No And the real test for this will be how quickly these removals back to France start happening whether they start happening when they start happening and if that has any sort of deterrent effect
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on the boats coming across. The difference with this deal compared with what's happened in the past
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is it's opening this idea of safe routes, so people with legitimate claims can stay in France
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they don't have to get on the boat, and they can make an application, which should allow us, although it doesn't really help with the numbers
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does allow us at least more scrutiny over who's coming across. But then for the people who know they're not going to pass those tests
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there's still every incentive to hope you slip through the net on the other side of the channel by getting a small boat
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and by disappearing into the black economy in the UK. And we're talking about such small numbers that even if it did work
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it would be very small numbers compared with the numbers of people actually clambering aboard the dinghies and making it successfully across
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Yes, that's right. And what we're seeing is a lot of those do slip into the grey economy, the black economy
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They end up working illegally, living illegally here, and we're losing track of them
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And so one of the other things that the government really needs to focus on is that big backlog of asylum claims that has built up because of this
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And what you do with those people whose claims fail. I mean, the government has been deporting more people
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but it is still less than are arriving in these big waves of boat arrivals
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They're missing a trick, though, aren't they? If they really are deporting more people than ever before we not seeing it are we No we not But the planes are going And I think one of the difficult things for the Labour Party is
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because of their own internal politics, they don't want to shout about it too much
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But we have seen a big increase in deportations over the last year
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I'm not sure what the number is. Do we know where to? I mean, it depends where these people are from, ultimately
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So I don't know. So this government is almost ashamed of the success they have had so far
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because it could offend some of the presumably further left people within their own party
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Yeah. Yeah. And not only that, Anne, immigrants, John, will carry ID cards
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under plans being worked on by the government. I've seen this reporting in The Sun today
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The digital document will prove their right to live and work and be uploaded to their telephones with this
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So this is not about organising to have people sent back. This is organising to have people..
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Stay here. Yeah. Yes, but what this means in theory is it should be easier to police
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Are all the systems that are... So when you rent a house, when you get a job, are you producing the right documentation
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And so this is kind of the carrot to make it easier for businesses
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and for legal migrants to do that. And presumably, knowing the Home Office
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to have a crackdown on businesses that aren't, who are flouting these rules and are giving jobs
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to people who don't have a right to be here. OK. John, we'll hold all that you have had to say
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We'll get people to comment on it. Get in touch, have your say
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