Man With Knife Shouts "I Will Kill You" At Dinghy As British Channel Crossings Resume After 21-Day Lull
Crossings from northern France restarted this week after the longest pause of the year, and the first footage to come out of them shows a man wading toward a packed dinghy off Hardelot with a knife raised, shouting "I will kill you." Press Association video shows him in waist-deep water as a man aboard the boat tries to hit him, with French rescue boats hovering a short distance away, according to the PA's report.
The man drew his arm back and the knife went into the sea behind him. The PA's updated report says he then climbed aboard and the dinghy left; its first version said he did not appear to board. He has not been identified, and we could find no word from French or British authorities on whether he was stopped, arrested or reached England. Downing Street said it was not aware of the specific dinghy and that "we are not complacent."
The incident came on Friday, when 671 people in nine boats made the crossing after 263 in three boats on Thursday, according to the Home Office's daily figures. That is 934 people in two days, after zero arrivals on every day from Oct. 24 to 28. The year's total now stands at 21,869, per PA's tally of Home Office data.
The government's line is that the trend is its friend. Arrivals are down 43% on this point last year (36,954) and 29% below 2024 (29,867), and a Home Office spokesperson said on Sept. 29 that the department had "just recorded the lowest number of summer arrivals since 2020." Those figures are provisional and, as the Home Office notes, exclude people who arrived undetected. Last year's 41,472 arrivals were the second-highest on record after 2022, as we reported this month.
Nigel Farage used the same news cycle to press his case. The Reform UK leader posted a picture of the Kurdish flag with video of a dinghy launched from a Belgian beach on Thursday in the flag's green, white, red and yellow, writing: "This boat is even custom-made to match the Kurdish flag. The gangs are laughing at us." He said Belgian officers in the footage "are just standing and watching" and that, in a second post, he would "deploy the Royal Navy and stop the boats forever," according to Rudaw. We could not open the posts themselves, so the wording rests on that report. It is unclear whether the painted boat reached Britain.
That is the pitch behind "Operation Fortress," which Farage unveiled on Aug. 3: a joint military command that would intercept boats, detain those aboard and return them to France under naval escort. Farage said he was "entirely confident" there would be "no more boats" within a fortnight of Reform taking office, and his home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf promised "the largest military operation in the English Channel since World War Two." The Conservatives called it a "gimmick," and shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Reform had no detailed plan and could not explain how it would land people in France without French cooperation.
Philp used Friday's numbers for his own attack, saying Labour has "lost control of our borders." Farage has since pledged to suspend the asylum system for a full parliament and deport about 90,000 pending claimants. The pressure is also local: last week landlords were offered more than double council rents to house Channel migrants.
Who the man was, and whether he is now in Britain, is still unknown. We found no word from the Home Office on whether he was among Friday's 671.
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