With small boat crossings once again hitting worrying highs, the conversation around how the UK handles illegal migration is heating up — and Australia’s migration hardliner Alexander Downer is back in the spotlight, urging Prime Minister Keir Starmer to reconsider a policy many thought was dead and buried.
The Message to Starmer Eat Some Humble Pie and Revive the Plan
Alexander Downer, the former Australian foreign minister credited with his country’s strict immigration crackdown, isn’t pulling any punches.
Speaking to The Sun, he advised Starmer to “eat a bit of political humble pie” and bring back the controversial Rwanda deportation scheme — which the PM scrapped as one of his first moves after taking office.
Downer insists the scheme could have worked, saying, “It would have worked assuming the legal issues could be properly addressed — and they were being.”
Starmer Remains Firm It Was a £700 Million Gimmick
Starmer, for his part, has shown no signs of regret over axing the plan.
He’s labelled it a waste of taxpayer money — a whopping £700 million — and insists it made little to no impact on stopping the dangerous Channel crossings.
For him, the focus now is on practical solutions like disrupting the criminal networks behind people smuggling.
Channel Crossings Reach New Alarming Heights
Downer’s push comes as the migrant situation across the English Channel continues to worsen.
Just this week, the number of arrivals over seven days reached 2,222 — that’s roughly one person arriving every 4.5 minutes.
It’s the highest weekly number since September 2023 and has tipped the overall total since Labour’s election victory past the 40,000 mark.
So far in 2025, 17,034 people have crossed into Britain — that’s up a significant 38% compared to the same period last year.
And these figures don’t even count the hundreds more who reportedly arrived in Dover yesterday.
What Australia Did and Why Downer Thinks It Worked
Back in the early 2000s, Downer helped implement one of the world’s toughest migration deterrent programs.
Under that policy, anyone arriving illegally by boat was redirected to detention centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
Migrants were then either sent back to their country or resettled elsewhere — but not in Australia.
According to Downer, once word spread that boat arrivals wouldn’t make it into the country, smugglers lost their customer base.
“They ran out of customers,” he said. “The smugglers’ businesses closed down.”
The Australian government under Tony Abbott even claimed that maritime asylum arrivals dropped by 90% in the first year alone.
Starmer’s Strategy Focuses on International Cooperation
While Downer champions the Australia model, Starmer is pursuing a different route.
He’s made it clear that his government will go after the smuggling gangs at the root of the problem.
Last month, he announced plans to begin discussions with other nations about setting up “return hubs” — third-party countries that would process failed asylum seekers before deportation.
Even Starmer admits this won’t be a magic solution, but he’s hopeful it’ll help curb the rising numbers and discourage future crossings.
Farage Blames the UK Not France for the Surge
Meanwhile, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has waded into the debate, telling Talk that it’s time Britain stopped blaming France for the crisis.
“We will never stop the boats from leaving France,” he said, suggesting that the problem lies more with the UK’s own handling of the situation than with its European neighbor.
The Pressure Builds on All Fronts
With crossings climbing, resources stretched, and criticism mounting, the pressure is on for Starmer to show results.
Whether that means sticking with his current plan or swallowing a bit of political pride to revisit the Rwanda idea remains to be seen — but for now, the debate over how to stem the tide continues to divide opinion on all sides.