Keir Starmer faces fresh fury over the “scandalous” Channel migrant fiasco after the number of small boat arrivals under Labour surged past 50,000.

Around 400 people were detected in small boats on Monday, smashing the barrier in a record 401 days.

The number of small boat arrivals under Rishi Sunak passed 50,000 603 days into his premiership.

Under Boris Johnson, it took 1,066 days.

Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, writing for the Daily Express, declared: “Express readers deserve so much better than this useless Prime Minister.

“Starmer talked the talk about ‘smash the gangs’ but they’re smashing him. In the face. Day after day. The gangs are safely going about their business knowing they’ll almost certainly not be caught or prosecuted.

“The truth is the situation in the Channel is nothing short of scandalous. The record levels of crossings are causing incalculable levels of harm to the country.

“These migrants transform the character of our communities. Nobody wants to live in areas with illegal migrants from backward cultures in the parks and outside the school gates. Nor do they want their hard-earned money being spent on illegal migrants when ordinary Brits are struggling.”

Some 281 people were detected in five boats on Sunday, following 435 arrivals in seven dinghies on Saturday – taking the total since Starmer took office to 49,797. And around 400 people on “five or six” boats are believed to have crossed the Channel on Monday, it is understood.

Alp Mehmet, Chairman of the Migration Watch think tank, told the Daily Express: “This is a shocking, if inevitable, milestone, which was going to be reached sooner rather than later once traffickers and migrants realised that our government was clueless on how to stop them.

“Since coming to office, Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper have come up with gimmicks, smoke and mirrors policies and pointless legislation.

“The latest wheeze, cooked up with President Macron, who ran rings around our PM, would have been better named the thousands in, none out scheme.

“At the current rate, we expect over 50,000, which we know about, to have crossed the Channel in small boats by year’s end.

“Until we detain and quickly remove those coming illegally, with no exceptions, they will continue to stream across. We must increase detention capacity, bring back something like the Rwanda deal and leave the ECHR.”

A record number of migrants have crossed the Channel for five consecutive months, highlighting how smugglers are exploiting Britain’s lax borders.

Analysis of Home Office figures show 4,586 people were detected in March, a 44% increase on the previous high of 3,180 in 2024.

The rise in April was even sharper, with the recorded total of 4,432 103% higher than the 2,176 arrivals in 2023.

May’s 3,738 was 28% higher than 2022. But the months of June and July show the scale of the crisis Labour is facing.

In June, 5,170 migrants crossed the Channel, up from 3,823 in 2023 – an increase of 35%. And July’s total of 5,454 represented an increase of 48% from 3,687 in 2022.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “Labour tore up our deterrents before they were even in place, and the results are there in black and white.

“Labour has surrendered our borders, and the consequences are being felt in our communities, from rising crime to shocking cases of rape and sexual assault by recent arrivals.

“When I went to the Channel to see Labour’s France returns deal in action, the truth was obvious. Within half an hour of arriving off the French coast, I watched two packed dinghies being escorted into UK waters.

“French ships waved them on, then collected the discarded life jackets for future crossings. This is a taxpayer-funded ferry service for the people-smuggling trade.

“Every illegal migrant should be removed immediately upon arrival. Only the Conservatives have the will and the plan to make that happen. Labour are too weak to act.”

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper signed a deal with her French counterpart, Bruno Retailleau, to return Channel migrants. Under the one-in, one-out deal, the UK will take asylum seekers approved under a new safe and legal route. And France will take back failed asylum seekers.

But fears are intensifying that the deal will fail to act as a deterrent because migrants can still lodge human rights claims to delay deportations.

And ministers have set aside £500m to invest in a “new, more sustainable accommodation model” as they scramble to close 210 migrant hotels.

Council chiefs have warned entire streets and flat blocks are being taken over to “exclusively” house asylum seekers.

Communities in Thanet, Canterbury, Dover and Folkestone have all been hit hardest by this practice, the Daily Express has been told.

Some 32,345 asylum seekers are living in hotels, while 66,683 are living in houses, flats and bedsits across the country.

The new “basic” accommodation, under the cross-Government model, will be “used on a temporary basis” to house asylum seekers waiting for their cases to be processed. Under one proposal, the Government could pay councils to buy or renovate properties.

Former student accommodation, abandoned care homes, empty tower blocks and converted houses and flats could also be used to house asylum seekers. Labour wants to close every migrant hotel within four years – but the number being used has increased since the General Election.

Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin said illegal migrants from “predominantly Muslim” countries put women “at risk of sexual assault”.

The MP for Runcorn and Helsby drew attention to asylum seekers arriving on small boats who were originally from Afghanistan.

Ms Pochin said: “The inconvenient truth for the left is that the culture of men from predominantly Muslim countries like Afghanistan is one that holds a medieval view of women’s rights. It is fundamentally alien to the centuries of progress made by our own western culture and attitudes.

“Women are at risk of sexual assault and rape from these men, hundreds of young men who arrive in this country, housed in our communities, who undoubtedly become sexually frustrated, have a warped view of their right to sexually assault women.”

She claimed that of 1,453 sexual assault convictions in 2024, a quarter were committed by foreign nationals.

Ms Pochin said: “Afghan men are three times more likely to be convicted of a sexual offence than someone born in the United Kingdom and represent the largest group of migrants who commit sexual violence against women, and yet we know that 18,000 at least, were covertly let into this country by the last government with no security vetting.”

She said Reform would deport all small boat migrants who live in houses of multiple occupancy (HMOs), who have been moved out of hotels.

The party would deport foreign criminals, she added at the event in Westminster, and said police would be made to respond to every “inappropriate sexual behaviour” report made against a migrant.