Sir Keir Starmer branded small boats crossing the Channel as “Farage boats” in his latest attack on Nigel Farage. In a swipe at Brexit, the Prime Minister said the Government was having to recover lost ground over returns caused by leaving the European Union.
He insisted the Reform UK leader had been “wrong” during the 2016 Brexit referendum that it would make no difference to migration policy if the UK voted leave.
Sir Keir told GB News: “I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU and he told the country it would make no difference if we left. He was wrong about that.
“These are Farage boats, in many senses, that are coming across the channel.”
Keir Starmer blames Brexit for migrant crisis as he calls dinghies ‘Farage boats’
Keir Starmer has reignited the Brexit debate after blaming Britain’s departure from the European Union for contributing to the rise in small-boat crossings across the English Channel and branding the vessels used by migrants “Farage boats”.
The prime minister made the remarks after Labour’s annual conference, as he stepped up his criticism of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and sought to defend the government’s approach to illegal migration.
Starmer’s comments linked the current Channel crossings to changes in Britain’s relationship with the European Union following Brexit. He argued that leaving the EU removed arrangements that had previously allowed Britain to return some asylum seekers to other European countries.
“These are Farage boats, in many senses, that are coming across the Channel,” Starmer said in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. He argued that Farage had supported Brexit while failing to anticipate some of its consequences for migration policy.
The remark was clearly designed as a political attack as well as a description of the migration problem.
Farage has spent decades campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union and remains one of the most prominent political figures associated with Brexit. Starmer therefore used the issue to argue that the Reform leader should bear some political responsibility for the consequences of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.
The prime minister specifically pointed to the loss of Britain’s participation in the EU’s Dublin arrangements.
Before Brexit, Britain was part of the Dublin system, which provided mechanisms for transferring certain asylum seekers to another participating European country where they had previously arrived or had a connection to their asylum claim.
After Brexit, those arrangements no longer applied to the UK in the same way.
Starmer argued that this had reduced Britain’s ability to return asylum seekers to European countries and had therefore made dealing with Channel crossings more difficult.
The Guardian reported that Starmer linked the rise in small-boat crossings to Brexit while defending Britain’s continued membership of the European Convention on Human Rights. The newspaper also reported that more than 33,000 people had crossed the Channel in small boats during 2025 by the time of his remarks, a record since the Home Office began publishing the series in 2018.
However, the relationship between Brexit and the small-boats crisis is more complicated than the political slogan suggests.
The number of Channel crossings began increasing substantially before Brexit was fully implemented. Small boats became a major feature of irregular migration to Britain during the late 2010s and early 2020s, with several factors influencing the movement of people across the Channel.
These include conditions in France and other European countries, international migration patterns, criminal smuggling networks, enforcement policies, asylum systems and the availability of legal routes.
The Migration Observatory at Oxford University has examined the effect of Brexit on migration and asylum arrangements. Its analysis says Brexit may have contributed to the increase in small-boat arrivals because the UK withdrew from certain EU asylum data-sharing and responsibility arrangements. However, it also cautions that the scale of Brexit’s contribution is uncertain and that other factors played important roles.
That uncertainty is important when assessing Starmer’s claim.
It is possible to establish that Brexit changed Britain’s asylum arrangements with the EU. It is also possible to establish that small-boat crossings subsequently reached unprecedented levels.
What is much harder to establish is exactly how many crossings occurred because of Brexit and how many would have happened regardless.
Starmer nevertheless used the issue to challenge Farage’s political record.
The prime minister said that before Brexit, Britain had agreements that gave it greater opportunities to return migrants to EU countries.
“I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU,” Starmer said. He argued that Farage had previously told voters Brexit would not create such problems.
Starmer’s wider argument is that Brexit supporters promised major improvements in areas such as migration and economic policy, but that some of those expectations were not fulfilled.
The prime minister has made similar arguments elsewhere.
In February 2026, Starmer said Farage had been wrong about several Brexit-related claims, including promises concerning NHS funding, trade regulation and migration. He argued that regular migration had increased substantially after Brexit rather than falling as some Brexit campaigners had predicted.
Farage and other Brexit supporters have rejected the idea that Britain’s departure from the EU should be blamed for the Channel crisis.
Farage has argued that illegal migration was already a problem while Britain was an EU member and that leaving the EU gave Britain the ability to establish its own immigration system.
He has also criticized arrangements that seek cooperation with France and the EU, arguing that Britain should exercise stronger control over its borders.
That disagreement has become particularly significant because Starmer’s government has itself pursued closer cooperation with European countries to tackle small boats.
In July 2025, Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron announced a pilot “one in, one out” arrangement under which some migrants arriving in Britain by small boat could be returned to France while Britain accepted other migrants through an agreed legal route.
The agreement was presented by the government as an attempt to disrupt smuggling networks and create a more controlled migration system. Farage criticized the arrangement, describing it as inconsistent with the objectives of Brexit.
Starmer’s latest remarks therefore contain an element of political irony.
A prime minister who has repeatedly defended Brexit’s result is now arguing that the consequences of Brexit have made one of Britain’s most difficult policy problems harder to solve.
At the same time, he is attempting to use new agreements with European countries to address that problem.
The government’s approach does not mean Britain is seeking to reverse Brexit.
Starmer has repeatedly ruled out rejoining the EU single market or customs union during the current parliament. Instead, Labour has pursued what it describes as a closer relationship with Europe while maintaining Britain’s status outside the EU.
The small-boats issue has also brought human-rights law back into the political debate.
Following the Labour conference, Starmer announced that the government would examine how certain provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights are interpreted by British courts in deportation cases.
He defended continued membership of the convention but said ministers needed to examine whether some provisions were being interpreted in ways that made deportation more difficult.
The government has particularly focused on Article 3, which prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, and Article 8, which protects private and family life.
Starmer’s position is therefore more complicated than simply blaming Brexit.
He is simultaneously arguing that Brexit removed useful cooperation mechanisms, that Britain must maintain international legal obligations, and that the government needs greater ability to remove people who have no legal right to remain.
The political challenge is substantial.
The government wants to reduce irregular migration while maintaining an asylum system for people genuinely fleeing persecution. Starmer has described secure borders and asylum for genuine refugees as compatible objectives.
During his Labour conference speech, he said Britain needed to control who entered the country while continuing to provide protection to people genuinely fleeing persecution. He also pledged to tackle criminal gangs, crack down on illegal working and remove people who have no right to remain.
Reform UK takes a substantially different approach.
Farage has argued for much tougher immigration controls and has made migration one of the central themes of his political campaign. Reform’s proposals have included major changes to asylum, settlement and deportation policy.
The argument over small boats is consequently part of a much wider political battle.
For Starmer, the issue provides an opportunity to argue that Brexit supporters underestimated the consequences of leaving the EU and that practical cooperation with European countries is necessary.
For Farage, the same crisis can be used to argue that successive governments have failed to control Britain’s borders despite promises from both Labour and the Conservatives.
The phrase “Farage boats” captures that political dispute in just two words.
It is not a neutral description of the vessels themselves. It is a rhetorical label intended to connect the small-boats crisis with Farage’s political legacy and Brexit campaign.
Whether that connection is persuasive depends partly on how much responsibility voters believe Brexit should bear for the current migration situation.
The available evidence supports a more nuanced picture.
Brexit clearly changed Britain’s relationship with the EU and ended the previous Dublin arrangements for asylum responsibility. There is evidence that this affected the UK’s ability to return some asylum seekers to European countries.
But the growth of small-boat crossings has multiple causes, and specialist analysis cautions against attributing the entire crisis to Brexit.
Starmer’s remarks therefore represent both a political argument and a policy debate.
The prime minister is seeking to make Farage’s long association with Brexit relevant to one of the most controversial issues in modern British politics.
Farage, meanwhile, is likely to continue arguing that the problem demonstrates the failure of governments to secure the border rather than the failure of Brexit itself.
The small boats crossing the Channel are therefore not simply a migration story. They have become another front in the unresolved argument over what Brexit changed, what it was supposed to achieve and how Britain should manage its relationship with Europe.
Starmer’s decision to call them “Farage boats” ensures that the political argument over those questions is likely to continue.