Christmas Day 2018 broke to the news that five boats with forty individuals had been intercepted while attempting to cross the English Channel – one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. At its narrowest, the English Channel crossing is only twenty miles, from the coast of France to the coast of England, but British identity and British refugee policy is grounded in the notion of the ‘spatial separation of an island, psychologically distant’ from Europe, and continental refugee concerns (Daddow 2013: 212–13). Despite state aspirations of isolation, 25 December 2018 saw boats arriving on the shore of Deal, in Kent, and the boats being intercepted by local RNLI and coastguard crews. Furthermore, media reports were emerging of more seizures of boats by French crews in French waters. The individuals making these crossings, which included unaccompanied children, were Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis and Kurds by nationality, and were looking to apply for asylum in Britain (Townshead 2019).

However, the British response to these landings was one of security, prevention and curtailment, whereby humanitarian concerns were marginalised and state interests dominated. In the days that followed, Home Secretary Sajid Javid relocated two Border Force vessels to patrol the English Channel crossing, as the duty of care was to the British border (Home Office 2018). In similar fashion to his approach to the Mediterranean crisis, Javid referenced the need to work ‘upstream’ (see Chapter 4). By focusing ‘upstream’ the government would be able to prevent migrants from undertaking the dangerous journey – which was the key priority – to not have refugees claim asylum at British borders, a principle embedded in the Conservative Manifesto (2017). Javid declared in the aftermath that he had a ‘duty of care to protect human life’. He spoke of the dangers of crossing the busiest shipping lanes and highlighted the risk to life, particularly the lives of young children undertaking the journey. Yet, simultaneously, Javid questioned the motives of the individuals and asked why they were making the hazardous journey to Britain, when France was already a safe country. Indeed, he (inaccurately) stressed that ‘the widely accepted international principle’ is that those seeking asylum should claim it in the first safe country that they reach – be that France or elsewhere.