The PM @andyburnham saying Brexit caused the migrant boats. The dates don’t back that up. Official Home Office figures start in 2018. That year 299 people crossed. In 2019 it was 1,843. We were still in the EU. Dublin still applied. The route already existed. There were even a handful of crossings before the referendum. Border inspectors later confirmed nine small-vessel arrivals between July 2014 and May 2016. It just wasn’t a mass route yet. What changed first was Calais. Britain and France spent years locking down the lorries: fences, dogs, CO₂ detectors, heartbeat monitors. Once that route got smashed, the gangs switched to dinghies launched off French beaches. That switch started while we were still members. Then people point to Dublin. Fine — look at the actual returns. In 2015 we sent 510 people out and took 131 in. By 2018 it was 209 out and 1,215 in. In 2019: 263 out, 714 in. We were already a net recipient. Most UK requests to send people back never happened. Losing Dublin removed a tool. It did not create a 40,000-person crossing. The wider European surge wasn’t caused by us leaving either. Frontex recorded about 1.8 million irregular detections in 2015, during the Syria crisis. Later spikes were on the Mediterranean and Balkan routes. The Channel is small next to that. And the record net migration years were not dinghies. Those peaks were mostly legal work, study and humanitarian visas. The boats are visible. They are not the bulk of the numbers. The boats got bigger and more organised after 2020. Average occupancy went from about 7 people per boat in 2018 to 65 in the year to June 2026. That’s gangs adapting, other routes being blocked, and pull factors here. It is not “we voted Leave, therefore the boats appeared.” You’re the PM do your research before you try and gaslight the public. mol.im/a/16160737