For most of the past two months, we've had terrible weather in the English Channel.
Although hardly a surprise, given we're still in winter, the conditions on the crossing from France have been particularly unforgiving - with strong winds and heavy waves making it largely impassable for small migrant boats.
So you'd be forgiven for believing the number of migrants reaching the UK would be down on last year's figures.
They are in fact almost 20 per cent ahead of the 2,998 migrants who'd crossed into British waters by this point in 2024.
On Wednesday, almost 200 migrants made the illegal journey from France.
More than 1,300 have arrived in five straight days of crossings since Sunday.
Indeed, Sunday also saw the biggest single March day of Channel migrant arrivals since the start of this crisis, when 592 people crossed to the UK in 11 migrant boats.
All this will make deeply uncomfortable reading for Sir Keir Starmer's Government, which has vowed to "smash the gangs".
That was eight months ago, when Labour announced millions of pounds extra for the new Border Security Command and the National Crime Agency, as part of efforts to go after the criminal networks responsible for the multi-billion pound trade in people smuggling.
With record small boat numbers, it's time Starmer did an uncomfortable about-face, writes Mark White
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It's true that law enforcement activity has been stepped up and there have been some notable successes in arresting suspected smugglers and disrupting organised gang activity.
But not only has that failed to slow down the number of small boat crossings, all the indications are that we're heading for another bumper year of arrivals, that will likely outstrip the year before.
It would have been unfair to expect instant results from Sir Keir Starmer's law enforcement-focused approach.
But eight months on, it's absolutely right to look at whether anything is changing in the Channel.
Sadly, it looks as though nothing is changing. Every time weather conditions are just about passable, the people smugglers are down on French beaches pushing out just as many, sometimes more migrant boats than before.
Everything I know about the Channel migrant crisis, having covered this topic for more than two decades, tells me a law enforcement approach alone will not be enough to make any meaningful impact on the numbers arriving.
It needs a deterrent, like the previous Government's Rwanda scheme, to convince migrants that they stand a significant chance of being shipped off elsewhere and not allowed to stay in the UK.
The Conservatives' plan for sending thousands of migrants to the East African nation was bogged down in multiple legal battles, which meant we never got to see whether the Rwanda scheme would have made an impact.
However, even the Prime Minister's new head of Border Security, Martin Hewitt, has suggested a law enforcement approach alone won't be enough to end this crisis.
And so Starmer, it's probably time for a rethink.
It might mean an uncomfortable about-face, but a deterrent scheme might be the only viable option to help break the people smuggling business model.
