Farage joins GB News members after staggering immigration poll delivers blow to Starmer

It comes as yet another blow to Starmer who is suffering in post-election polling and has seen his popularity dip to just 29%.

Speaking on GB News Farage said: “More than 10,000 people now have crossed the English Channel and been processed through Dover since Keir Starmer became the Prime Minister.

“That includes 801 who came on Saturday alone. It brings the total since this whole thing began to an incredible 137,000.

"But it's all going to be okay because we have a new Border Security Command, and we're going to put a £75 million investment into it, money that we won't be now spending on Rwanda.

“And the plan is that the National Crime Agency will work together with MI5 and other agencies, but also will work with Europol.

“And there'll be National Crime Agency officers in Bulgaria, one of the places where dinghies and engines get smuggled in and across Europe.

“But the question, I suppose, is, will this work?

“I have no great confidence that it will. Because it seems to me that if you smash the gangs, even if you do smash the gangs, the money these people can make is so great that others will come and fill their places rather like whack-a-mole.

“I just don’t believe it’s going to work. I don’t believe it can be done.”

It comes as GB News members were asked whether they trust Starmer when he says he will smash the gangs.

In an exclusive poll of nearly 2000 GB News members, some 98 per cent said they did not trust Starmer in his pledge to 'smash the gangs.

Starmer's own border chief today admitted that the current plan to target smuggling gangs was not enough.

Britain needs to do more than just crack down on smuggling gangs to combat the small boats crisis, the new border chief has warned.

Martin Hewitt, who was named in the role on Monday, is understood to have pushed for a deterrent as part of an official strategy for curbing illegal migration to the UK.

While it's unclear what kind of deterrent Hewitt may want, his calls follow internal National Crime Agency memos from 2023 in which officials concluded stopping the boats would be impossible without one.

The NCA had added that no amount of money nor effort against human traffickers would be enough to stop the crossings entirely.