Andy Burnham must follow Donald Trump's lead and slam Britain's door shut as 10,000 migrants arrive

Ten thousand. That is how many have come ashore in small boats since Andy Burnham walked into Downing Street on July 20. GB News puts the tally at 10,139, close to 98 a day. That daily pace is worse than Theresa May’s, Boris Johnson’s or Rishi Sunak’s.

Across the Atlantic, a president who vowed to stop illegal crossings has cut border arrests to their lowest recorded level. Burnham points to a percentage.

On the day he took office in January 2025, Trump told the country: "All illegal entry will immediately be halted." He put his presidency behind that sentence, and the border numbers collapsed.

Burnham made his pledge in August, after a single dinghy carried a record 230 people to Britain. His government, he said, would be “relentless in chasing them down”. He committed to no timeline. “I’d rather promise to people what I know I can do,” he explained.

Trump named a result. Burnham named an attitude.

Trump’s people count those who never get in. By the administration’s own figures, Border Patrol recorded 98,708 southwest border apprehensions in the year to September 30, the lowest annual total in the modern records it publishes. September was the 17th consecutive month without a single release at the border.

Burnham counts something else. Crossings are 39 per cent lower than at this point last year, and he boasted to Labour’s conference that they were "down 40 per cent". The fall is real. But it is cold comfort on the Kent coast, where 22,608 people have landed since January. A 40 per cent fall from a disastrous baseline still leaves more than 10,000 people entering Britain illegally in barely over three months.

A percentage is what a manager reports when the raw number is too embarrassing to read aloud.

Trump wanted help, so he asked with tariffs attached. In February 2025, Mexico agreed to send 10,000 of its National Guard to the northern frontier after he threatened to tax its exports. Within days, their trucks were rolling along the border at Ciudad Juárez, opposite El Paso.

Burnham inherited a deal with France and watched it die. Under “one in, one out”, Britain returned 1,087 people to France by 30 June and accepted 1,117 in exchange, Home Office figures show. Shabana Mahmood told MPs each removal cost taxpayers about £56,000. The scheme expired on 1 October, and Paris now wants a Europe-wide replacement, which leaves Britain waiting on 27 governments instead of one.

More in than out, at £56,000 a head. Britain paid a fortune to swap migrants and ended up taking in more than it sent back.

Who pays? In Trump’s America, the crosser pays: arrest, detention and a flight home. In Burnham’s Britain the taxpayer pays. The Home Office’s own accounts list £2.96 billion in asylum costs for 2025-26, before grants. Every pound of it came out of working people’s pay packets.

FOLLOW BRITAIN'S MIGRANT CRISIS NEWS HERE

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Burnham told GB News that "all parts of the country need to work, to play their part", and ministers are reportedly considering lifting the caps on what the Home Office pays landlords, so asylum housing can reach dearer postcodes. The strain spreads to the shires. The bill stays with the public.

Trump showed what happens when a government treats a border as its own responsibility. He did not ask permission from foreign capitals before enforcing American law. Burnham, by contrast, told the Sunday Times: "I am positive about closer ties with Europe and I’m not hiding that.” Closer ties, he added, would "give us stronger control of migration".

Britons voted to leave the EU so their own Parliament could run their borders. At the Brussels summit on 20 November, the agenda Burnham himself announced puts food and drink, energy, emissions trading and a youth scheme first, and “deeper co-operation on immigration” last. None of it is a returns deal.

That is the difference. Trump used the powers of his office to make illegal entry harder, costlier and less attractive. Burnham has produced a vocabulary of compassion, partnership and process. What Britain has received instead is 10,139 arrivals, a rising bill, and a promise to be “relentless” at some unspecified future date.

A government serious about stopping the boats does not wait for 27 European governments to agree on a replacement scheme. It negotiates, removes, detains where necessary, and makes clear that crossing the Channel in a dinghy is not a route into Britain. It does not celebrate a percentage while the dinghies keep coming.

Trump slammed the door, and the arrest figures proved it. Burnham has 10,000 arrivals and a press release.

Britain desperately needs a prime minister who stops the boats. It has one who counts them.. At the next election, voters can hire a prime minister who does.