Brussels’ rejection of UK asylum returns, wielding ECHR compliance as a weapon, fuels Channel chaos, burdens taxpayers, and fractures communities, exposing Brexit’s promise of control as a cruel myth.
THE RATIONALS
The English Channel churns under a sullen sky, its waves ferrying flimsy dinghies packed with desperate migrants, 54 to a craft meant for half that, risking all for Britain’s shores. In 2024, 73 souls perished in these crossings, the deadliest year on record. Five years after Brexit’s call of “taking back control,” the UK is not sovereign but besieged, its borders a mockery. The architect of this chaos? Not just smugglers or distant wars but the European Union, exacting revenge for Britain’s departure with a calculated refusal to cooperate on asylum returns. By slamming the door on UK proposals and brandishing the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as a truncheon, Brussels ensures Britain drowns in migrant claims, taxpayer costs, rising extremism and social unrest. The 2022 immigration “surge” of 906,000 net migrants wasn’t an accident, it’s a wound deepened by this punitive post-Brexit trap, and Britain’s still bleeding.
Before Brexit, the Dublin III Regulation was Britain’s bulwark. It allowed the UK, rarely the first EU entry point, to return asylum seekers to countries like France or Italy. From 2015 to 2018, 1,465 migrants were sent back under Dublin, easing pressure on this island nation. Post-Brexit, that shield shattered. Home Office data tells a grim tale, returns to EU states plummeted from 289 in 2020 to five in 2021, and a measly 60 in the year to March 2025. Why? In 2020, as Brexit talks faltered, the EU rejected Britain’s draft agreements for returns and unaccompanied child reunions, with Michel Barnier, then negotiator, dismissing them as “unbalanced.” Don’t buy the bureaucratic nonsense. The EU’s stance, as Ursula von der Leyen reiterated in 2025, hinges on ECHR compliance, enshrined in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement’s Article 763. Defy it, through Rwanda-style deportations or the Illegal Migration Act’s blanket denials, and Brussels can suspend security, extradition or trade ties in a heartbeat. Academics Mitsilegas and Guild (2024) expose the truth, this is no mere formality it’s a weapon to enforce human rights orthodoxy.
In 2023, Britain’s Illegal Migration Act, which toyed with denying asylum to irregular arrivals, prompted Brussels to warn of TCA suspension. By May 2025, as Labour’s Keir Starmer pushed his “EU reset,” the EU rebuffed UK access to the Schengen Information System (SIS) and Eurodac’s 7 million fingerprints, vital for identifying and returning migrants, insisting on ECHR fealty. Norway, a non-EU state, enjoys limited Eurodac access for security cooperation, proof Brussels bends when it suits. For Britain though, it’s a one-sided deal. The UK pays £480 million (2023–2025) for French patrols, yet gets just 60 EU returns. The result? Small boats surged to 42,000 in the year to September 2024, up 34% from 2023, nearing the 2022 peak of 45,755. Ninety percent claim asylum, clogging a system with 111,100 applications in 2025, up 14% from 2024.
Taxpayers ultimately bear the brunt of the EU’s vendetta. The asylum system cost £4.76 billion in 2024–2025, down 12% from 2023 but still a crushing load. Housing 32,000 asylum seekers in hotels, 42% less than 2023, still burns £5.77 million daily. Labour’s dream of £1 billion in savings by 2028, via non-hotel sites, is fantasy without EU returns. The £480 million UK-France deal cut crossings 26% in 2024, but Q1 2025 rebounded 22% to 6,600. Pre-Brexit, Dublin offset costs, now, every pound spent on patrols, every hotel bill is a reminder that Britain funds Brussels’ principles with no relief in sight.
Small boats, though just 3–4% of total inflows, command the headlines and spark tensions that fracture society and reopen old wounds. By October 2024, 38% of Britons had named immigration their top concern, up from a mere 6% in 2022 and now neck-and-neck with the NHS, while views on immigration’s economic impact soured from 59% positive in 2022 to 40%. This brewing fury has erupted on to the streets, from Essex hotel riots where locals clashed violently over asylum housing amid legal battles, nationwide protests, to councils buckling under the strain including London where the share of seekers rose to 19% in 2024 from 10% in 2018. The outrage cuts across divides, with voices from Reform UK’s Nigel Farage to former Labour home secretaries Jack Straw and David Blunkett decrying ECHR constraints and demanding reform or suspension to halt the chaos. At the heart of the blame lie EU-driven arrivals, with 39% of 2025’s claims stemming from boats led by Afghans (15%) and Eritreans (11%). Without EU returns, Britain’s social fabric unravels, and divisions fester unchecked.
While communities simmer under this pressure, the human toll of this crisis mounts. Those 73 deaths in 2024, men, women and children haunt the conscience, packed into dinghies by smugglers pocketing thousands. The asylum backlog, 71,000 cases (91,000 people) in June 2025, means waits of 413 days, often years. Appeals surged to 42,000 by end-2024, with 50-week waits as the Nationality and Borders Act (2022) cut grant rates to 48%. Unaccompanied children, 3% of claims, lose Dublin-era reunion rights, facing family separation. The EU’s ECHR stance, noble on paper leaves Britain to mop up the mess with smugglers laughing.
Labour’s “reset” with the EU is a study in denial. Starmer’s May 2025 summit yielded platitudes, energy ties, vague security nods, but no Dublin revival, no SIS/Eurodac access. Starmer’s silence on ECHR tensions, dodging the sovereignty trap, betrays his reset’s fragility. The Border Security Bill boasts 35,000 returns in 2024–2025, up 28%, and 116 boats seized since July 2024. Yet the backlog persists, and smuggling adapts. Fisheries talks stall until 2038, youth mobility languishes, and the EU’s ECHR guillotine looms. Scrapping Rwanda dodged Strasbourg’s wrath but won no favors from the EU.
Calls for ECHR reform or exit has spanned the political divide. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK pushes for withdrawal, but so do former Labour home secretaries Jack Straw and David Blunkett, who recently urged suspension amid the migrant crisis. Legal scholar Steve Peers warns of TCA Armageddon, no Europol, no extraditions, with Britain left adrift alongside Belarus and Russia. Mitsilegas and Guild are blunt, EU cooperation demands ECHR loyalty or the TCA falls. The Rwanda debacle proved it, the European Court of Human Rights grounded flights in 2022. Labour’s economic tinkering is futile without EU returns. Norway’s limited Eurodac deal shows Brussels bends for some, but for Brexit Britain it’s revenge.
Brexit’s ‘taking back control’ was just an illusion. From £4.76 billion in asylum and migrant costs to nationwide protests and hotel riots, the EU’s stance fuels a crisis that betrays Brexit’s promise. The 2022 “surge” of 906,000 net migrants, driven by legal non-EU inflows, was inflamed by irregular arrivals that EU rejections made inevitable. The 2024 drop to 431,000 shows a tightening, but small boats, 3–4% of inflows, still steal headlines and fuel fury. Britain, having shaped the ECHR’s principles in 1950 now chafes at its creation. The English Channel’s no moat but a motorway and sovereignty a slogan. Without ECHR compromise or Brussels’ blink, chaos reigns, taxpayers bleed, and communities divide. The EU’s Brexit revenge is brazen sabotage, enforcing ECHR rules to block returns of half the Channel crossers and slamming data doors on Starmer’s reset, all while chaining borders to endless resource drains. Britain is haemorrhaging and Brussels calls it payback.
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This article (EU’s Brexit Revenge: Sabotaging UK Borders to Enforce Human Rights) was created and published by The Rationals and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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