Burnham Blames Lost EU Returns for the Boats. In 2018 Britain Sent Back Just 209

Analysis | By Matt, Editor

In 2018, while Britain was still inside the EU’s Dublin returns system, the Home Office asked other EU countries to take back 5,510 asylum seekers. It managed to send back 209. In the same year, 1,215 were transferred the other way, into Britain.

Hold that number in your head. Because on Monday morning the Prime Minister went on television and told you the boats are Brexit’s fault.

“I think we’ve got weaker control now,” Andy Burnham told ITV’s Good Morning Britain. “The reason the small boats crisis has arisen is because we can’t return people, and people know we can’t do that in the same way that we used to be able to do.”

Used to be able to do. Two hundred and nine. That is the system he is mourning.

The news, without the gloss

Two things happened on Monday 26 October. Burnham blamed Brexit for the Channel crossings. And London Mayor Sadiq Khan joined the Labour figures pushing back on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plan to make most migrants wait 10 years, not five, before they can claim indefinite leave to remain, the right to stay for good. We covered the day’s events here.

Strip away the spin and you are left with a simple picture. Labour’s own Home Secretary says one thing. Labour’s own Prime Minister says the opposite. Labour’s own Cabinet ministers and mayors line up against a policy Labour itself announced. And the people paying for every week of indecision are the ones who never get a say: British taxpayers.

What they said then

Shabana Mahmood, 4 February 2026, to the Commons Home Affairs Committee. Lib Dem MP Paul Kohler put it to her that the boats were “a post-Brexit problem” because of lost Dublin returns. She said she would “dispute whether Dublin actually worked as was intended”, called the claim “a bit of a stretch”, and added: “I am sure there are lots of other debates to be had about the rights and wrongs of Brexit, but is Brexit responsible for the boats? I do not think that is true.” (official transcript, Q52)

She went further: “The idea that this has happened because we have lost the access to Dublin and the returns agreement with the EU, I think that is too much of a stretch.” (Q53)

Mahmood, same session, on settlement. “Five years is actually quite a short period before people can be permanently settled in the country, with all the benefits that brings. It is therefore right that we extend it.” And, crucially: “We are not consulting on the basic idea of the qualifying period moving from five years to 10 years.” (Q4 and Q35)

Keir Starmer, 12 May 2025, launching Labour’s immigration white paper. “The time it takes to acquire settled status extended from five years to ten.” Settlement, he said, would become “a privilege that is earned, not a right”. (gov.uk transcript)

Angela Rayner was Deputy Prime Minister in that Cabinet. So the 10-year rule is not some Mahmood frolic. It has been Labour government policy for well over a year.

Andy Burnham, 9 June 2026, at a BBC hustings in the Makerfield by-election. He said small boat crossings were down and returns were up under this government, called for “greater use of detention” and “a speedier return”, and concluded: “I think this government is getting a grip, but it needs to go further.” (Manchester Evening News)

Burnham, 25 September 2026, as Prime Minister. “Crossings were down by a half across the summer and down 50% on a few years ago, so that’s major progress on where we were.” (BBC News)

What they’re saying now

Burnham, 26 October 2026: “I think we’ve got weaker control now.” In June the government was “getting a grip”. In September it was “major progress”. Now, with an EU summit in Brussels on 20 November and Burnham saying he would like to see Britain rejoin “in my lifetime”, control is suddenly weaker and the culprit is the 2016 vote. (The Independent, LBC)

To be fair to him, Burnham did grumble in September about the “loss of collaboration” with Europe “thanks to Brexit”. But there is a world of difference between a passing grumble and telling the country, as Prime Minister, that Brexit is “the reason” the crisis arose. That second claim is the one his own Home Secretary told Parliament she does not believe.

Sadiq Khan, 26 October 2026: “I’m somebody who’s not in favour of changing rules retrospectively, but also I’m somebody who recognises we need to control our borders.” He says he is confident Mahmood will land on “a policy that we can all get behind” once the consultation is done, according to GB News. Back in January, at the Fabian Society, he was blunter: doubling the wait “doesn’t give them a stake in our country’s future – it takes that stake away”. (LabourList)

Angela Rayner, March 2026: the plans were “un-British” and amounted to “moving the goalposts”. (BBC News) She is now back in the Cabinet as Housing Secretary and, the BBC reports, has stuck with her criticism.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, 22 October 2026: repeatedly refused on Sky News to say she backed the plan, then joked to reporters that she had promised herself she would “never lie”, then put out a statement saying she “fully” supports the Home Secretary. (BBC News; our report)

And the Prime Minister? On 23 October he said he “strongly” supports settlement being “a right to be earned”, but would only say decisions would come “soon”. (The Independent) A rule Labour said in February was not even up for consultation is now being talked about as if the consultation will decide everything.

The numbers Burnham left out

Here is the Dublin system Burnham says used to protect us, in the Home Office’s own figures, alongside the small boat arrivals that grew while Britain was still inside it. The UK stayed bound by Dublin until 31 December 2020.

Year	Sent out of UK under Dublin	Taken into UK under Dublin	Small boat arrivals
2015	510	131	Not recorded
2016	362	558	Not recorded
2017	314	461	Not recorded
2018	209 (of 5,510 requests)	1,215	299
2019	263 (of 3,258 requests)	714	1,843
2020	105 (of 8,502 requests)	882	8,466

Look at 2020. Britain was still in Dublin. The Home Office made 8,502 requests to send people back, and says the jump was down to small boat arrivals, many of whom had already claimed asylum in an EU country. It sent back 105. Covid travel bans and a pause in EU transfers that spring made that year worse, but 2018 and 2019, with no pandemic, were hardly better: 209 and 263.

Between the 2016 vote and leaving, Britain took in more people under Dublin than it sent out every single year. That is not a returns system. It is a revolving door that turned the wrong way. Even BBC Verify, checking Starmer’s “Farage boats” line in October 2025, found the UK was a net recipient from the referendum until it left the scheme. (BBC Verify)

There is a fair point on the other side, and we will make it for him. Experts at Oxford’s Migration Observatory told BBC Verify that losing the EU’s Eurodac fingerprint database made it harder to spot people who had already claimed elsewhere, and that some migrants see post-Brexit Britain as a better bet. That is an argument for doing proper returns deals. It is not proof that 209 a year was “control”. You can read more on the scale of it now in our report on 4,000 migrants massing on the French coast, and on the claim that the EU would save us in our report on Andrew Neil and Kinnock’s EU boats claim.

What it means for you

Every week Labour argues with itself, the bills keep coming. Mahmood told the same committee that hotels cost £8.3 million a day in 2023-24 and £5.77 million a day in 2024-25. That is still millions every single day, paid by people who have never been asked.

On settlement, the Home Office’s own forecast is that around 1.6 million people could qualify between 2026 and 2030. Mahmood herself warned MPs that once settled, people can access social housing and the welfare state. So when Khan, Rayner and the Labour left fight to keep the five-year route for people already here, the cost of getting it wrong does not land on them. It lands on the family on the council house waiting list and the worker whose taxes fund it all. See how Labour’s double-rent migrant deals leave British families last, and why so few are removed in our report on Mahmood’s threat to ban Eritrea over returns.

Verdict

This is opinion, built on the record above.

Burnham cannot have it both ways. Either his government was “getting a grip” in June and making “major progress” in September, or control is weaker than ever and Brexit is to blame. He chose the second story on the very day the Brussels talks loom and his own rejoin ambitions are in the headlines. His own Home Secretary, giving evidence to MPs, called that story “too much of a stretch”.

Meanwhile Khan says he wants to “control our borders” while fighting the one concrete control on the table. Rayner sat in the Cabinet that announced 10 years and now calls it “un-British”. Fahnbulleh could not say she backed it without making a joke about lying.

Brexit did not put 41,000 people in dinghies last year. Smuggling gangs did, a broken asylum system did, and a political class that would rather blame the 17.4 million than fix it did. The Dublin record shows what “the way we used to” really looked like. Ordinary Britons voted for control in 2016. They are still waiting for a Labour government that will deliver it instead of arguing about who to blame.

Sources

• Home Affairs Committee, oral evidence: The work of the Home Office, 4 February 2026 (HC 505)
• gov.uk: PM remarks at Immigration White Paper press conference, 12 May 2025
• The Independent: Burnham on Brexit and immigration, 26 October 2026
• LBC: Burnham would like UK to return to EU in his lifetime, 26 October 2026
• GB News: Sadiq Khan on Mahmood’s settlement plans, 26 October 2026
• Manchester Evening News: Burnham on small boats, 9 June 2026
• BBC News: Our goal is to stop all migrant boats, says Burnham, 25 September 2026
• LabourList: Sadiq Khan criticises government immigration reforms, 24 January 2026
• BBC News: Rayner warns immigration reforms risk being un-British, 18 March 2026
• BBC News: Mahmood signals rethink on migrants’ right to remain, 28 September 2026
• BBC News: Fahnbulleh says she backs Home Secretary on migration, 22 October 2026
• The Independent: Burnham fails to commit to Mahmood’s reforms in full, 23 October 2026
• BBC Verify: Was Starmer right to link Brexit to a rise in small boat crossings?, 1 October 2025
• Home Office: Immigration statistics, year ending December 2018 (Dublin)
• Home Office: Immigration statistics, year ending December 2019 (Dublin)
• Home Office: Immigration statistics, year ending December 2020 (Dublin)
• Migration Watch UK: Dublin transfers 2015 to 2018 (Home Office data)
• House of Commons Library: What is the Dublin III Regulation?
• Home Office: Irregular migration to the UK, year ending December 2021