Reform has pledged to use the Royal Navy to “intercept” small boats crossing the Channel and return them to France. But it isn’t quite that simple.
Nigel Farage’s party said the plan would constitute the “largest military operation” in the Channel since the Second World War and would be coined ‘Operation Fortress’. Farage said on Monday he was “entirely confident” the plan would not break maritime law.
More than 2,000 migrants have arrived on small boats since Andy Burnham became prime minister last month, but crossings so far this year are down around 43 per cent compared with the same period in 2025.
But deploying the Navy for such a task would face serious challenges. Professor Kevin Rowlands, who worked on Operation Sophia, an EU naval mission aimed at stopping people smugglers in the Mediterranean Sea, said the “idea of a naval fortress might sound decisive” but in reality “it doesn’t sit well with international maritime law, sovereign borders, and the physical unsuitability of modern warships for small-boat interdiction in the Dover Strait”.
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