This week saw a major milestone reached in the small boats crisis, with well over 35,000 Channel migrants crossing so far this year.

That figure will be deeply alarming for Sir Keir Starmer and his "smash the gangs" policy, coming almost two-and-half months earlier than that headline figure was reached last year.

This week's arrivals mean we're just over 1,000 away from passing the total number of Channel migrants for the whole of 2024.

And with at least another couple of days of reasonable conditions in the Channel ahead, it's possible we'll pass last year's total this weekend.

By this week, well over 35,000 Channel migrants were revealed to have crossed this year alone

That puts us on track for the busiest year since the small boats crisis began in 2018.

The current record stands at more than 46,000 migrants who made the crossing in 2022.

Even if we don't quite reach that record, by any measure, 2025 will have been a dismal year in the Channel.

The Prime Minister took office boldly predicting his approach would end this most visible manifestation of illegal migration - a crisis which has stoked huge tensions right across the UK and has all political parties scrambling to come up with their own solutions.

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Fast forward 15 months since the election, and the political messaging has changed.

"Smash the gangs" has been quietly pushed aside - instead, the Government tells us there are no quick solutions to ending this crisis.

Labour says it's no longer just a law enforcement approach. Any solution has to be multi-pronged, also relying on returns deals with the likes of Albania and Pakistan.

It's now more than two months since the Government operationalised its migrant returns deal with France.

'Smash the gangs' has been quietly pushed aside - instead, the Government tells us there are no quick solutions to ending this crisis

For weeks, no one was sent back across the Channel. But we were told that was to be expected, as the two countries had to select, vet and then deal with any initial legal challenges.

That resulted in an absurdly small number of returns - just seven by September 25.

And in the fortnight since, the flow back across to France is still hardly even a trickle.

Two special charter flights and other scheduled services have now sent a total of 26 small boat migrants back across the Channel, while 18 have been chosen by France and sent over to the UK.

The Government has said it hopes to increase the number of returns to a more substantial level in the months ahead.

The flow of migrants back across to France is still hardly even a trickle, despite Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer's deal

But any attempt at the moment to portray the France deal as some sort of deterrent would clearly be ridiculous.

Many times the number currently being returned would need to be sent before the Government could reasonably argue it may make some would-be small boat migrants think again.

And even then, the people-smugglers will still argue the chance of someone being earmarked for return to France is very small.

Sadly, they'd be right. In the two months since this deal came into operation, more than 10,000 small boat migrants have made the illegal crossing to the UK.