Twenty-four hours after failing to board a small boat to get to England, a determined migrant on crutches finally succeeded
Less than 24 hours after abandoning his attempt to head for Britain, a desperate migrant on crutches finally succeeded in his bid to cross the channel.
The bearded middle-aged man, who could only hobble towards the waves aided by a friend, was featured in today's paper as a graphic illustration of how France is unable to stop the tide of dinghies across the Channel.
On Tuesday, despite the firing of tear gas grenades by 50 armed French police equipped with riot shields, your reporter watched as even this disabled migrant was able to slip through the thin blue line of gendarmes on Gravelines beach near Calais.
And he reached the water – whereupon he was protected by increasingly controversial rules barring officers from even touching migrants or their dinghies.
On that occasion he was not able to join maybe 60-plus fellow travellers on the giant 'taxi boat' dinghy which arrived to pick them up.
Scores of others were hauled aboard as police and officials watched, from land and four sea craft, without doing anything.
But the dinghy was too full for the disabled migrant to be pulled on, and he limped, sodden, back to shore. The Mail predicted he would surely try again the next day.
He did just that, at the exact same spot.
Scores of migrants were hauled aboard as police and officials watched, from land and four sea craft, without doing anything
With no police even in sight this time, he was first in the queue to be dragged on to yet another 'taxi' dinghy.
As the sun rose at 5.30am, his crutch was held aloft like Excalibur as his fellow migrants helped him aboard.
Within minutes, as we again watched, the rubber boat was full to bursting, around 20 migrants sitting on each side and more in the middle.
It then set off across the Channel towards England, passing over the horizon within a quarter of an hour. Whether it arrived is unclear.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who scrapped the Conservative plan to send small boat arrivals to Rwanda, continues to declare he will be able to 'smash the gangs' and stop the boats with the aid of French police, who we are sending millions to.
Yet the migrants continue to exploit the loophole which means once they are in the sea, even up to the ankles, police will touch neither them nor their dinghies, through fear of harming them, meaning they are free to sail to England.
And police have told the Mail there are simply too many migrants, and too much shoreline near England, for them ever to be stopped - particularly as they are confident they will be welcomed here.
There may have been a reason no police were at dinghy hotspot Gravelines meanwhile.
Sixteen police fans and a giant digger later turned up the main migrant camp a few miles inland between a major road and railway line at Grande-Synthe.
Gazebos used by migrants as shops selling food, cigarettes and mobile phones, plus holding information on illicit channel crossings, were smashed to bits, and migrants told to keep away.
Yet again, the effect was limited. Even with officers and the digger still there, a huge queue of 200 migrants and more soon gathered literally a stone's throw away to receive free food distributed by a charity.
They showed no sign of wanting to go anywhere. Except England.
A Kurdish Iraqi living in the area, who asked not to be named, said: 'Of course migrants are upset the police have destroyed their shops - and are searching the site for weapons used in feuds between them.
'But they'll just set up again nearby. And be even more determined to get in a dinghy across the Channel.'
Latest figures show £3.1 billion was spent on housing asylum seekers in hotels in 2023-24, out of a total asylum support bill of £4.7 billion.
More than 30,000 asylum seekers are housed in about 200 hotels across Britain, many of whom arrived illegally in dinghies, and ministers are looking at moving them into derelict tower blocks and student digs.
But despite Ms Reeves' pledge to end the use of hotels, the Tories pointed out that the small print of her Spending Review documents revealed that £2.5 billion will still be spent each year on asylum support by the end of the decade.
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