Why Michel Barnier could solve Starmer’s migration problem
Napoleon famously preferred lucky generals and it’s just possible that political developments in France are about to provide Sir Keir Starmer with an unexpected slice of good fortune. After weeks of deadlock following an inconclusive snap election earlier this summer, French President Emmanuel Macron has appointed the European Union’s former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to the post of prime minister.
Given the tough stances that Barnier took during the interminable horse-trading that followed the UK’s decision to leave the EU, it might not be immediately obvious how this benefits les Rosbifs. However, in attempting to revive his political career in France, Barnier has struck an increasingly hardline stance on immigration. If promises turn into action, Starmer may have secured an important ally in his bid to crack down on Channel crossings.
During his bid to become the presidential candidate for the conservative Les Républicains party in 2022, Barnier claimed immigration was “out of control” and proposed a three to five-year moratorium on non-EU arrivals to France. He even asserted that France needed to regain its “legal sovereignty” and “no longer be subject to the rulings of the CJEU [Court of Justice of the European Union] or the ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights],” the two top courts in the EU.
“You can find nothing in the French constitution about migration, and there is almost nothing in the European treaties. For 30 or 40 years, there’s a kind of interpretation that is always in favour of the migrants . . . We have to rewrite something in the [EU] treaties or in the [ECHR],” Barnier said last year.
Past remarks also suggest that Barnier might be open to a close working relationship with Starmer. In November, 2023, the veteran French politician told the Financial Times: “I think Starmer is a European like me – a patriot and European.” He described the UK prime minister’s plan for closer ties with the bloc, which includes a UK-EU veterinary agreement, as “pragmatic and possible”.
An entry in Barnier’s My Secret Brexit Diary dating back to 2018 describes Starmer as the British politician “who impresses me the most for his ability to grasp in detail what is at stake in Brexit negotiations… I get the feeling that Keir Starmer will one day be UK prime minister”.
Diplomatic experts point out that Anglo-French relations will mostly be conducted between Downing Street and President Macron in the Élysée Palace. Nevertheless, some point out that one of Labour’s best hopes of reducing the Channel crossings by migrants in small boats would be for the UK to strike a swift returns agreement with France.
There have been some faint signs of a possible detente between the country’s on both sides of La Manche that Barnier could build on if so inclined. Earlier this week, France’s interior minister Gérald Darmanin called for a treaty on migration between the EU and the UK after 12 migrants died trying to cross the Channel in the worst such incident this year. The tragic deaths do not appear to have deterred further crossings.
“Clearly it’s important to have cooperation between countries in dealing with these issues,” says Dr Peter Walsh, a senior researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. He points out that there have been meetings between the UK and France roughly once a year for the past decade.
“This usually results in more money, more resources and the beefing up of patrols in the Channel,” says Dr Walsh. “But, as we have seen, this has not done a great deal to lessen the number of people trying to make the crossing.”
David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, who has known Barnier for 40 years, suggests Starmer could benefit from the appointment, but warns that “diplomacy is not about friendships.”
“Any new prime minister is a good opportunity for a new relationship, and Barnier is not antagonistic towards us,” he says. “At the margin, if we handle the new relationship well it could work to our advantage if we can find something that the French want to negotiate over.”
But former Brexit minister David Jones warns that Barnier is a “very tricky character,” whose recent tough words on immigration might not be matched by equal deeds.
“Barnier’s making noises on immigration and the court system but I’m not sure it’s going to change much. Brussels will always be the focus for him,” he says. “Barnier is extremely cunning, and I mean that in a complimentary sense. One wonders if he harbours ambitions for the presidency now that Macron looks like a busted flush and that’s why he’s making these kind of noises.”
At a summit in Paris in March last year, the then British prime minister Rishi Sunak and Macron struck a deal, which resulted in the UK doubling the amount of money it was sending to France each year, from just over £60m to nearly £120m, to help fund solutions to the small boats problem.
Among other things, the money is supposed to go towards paying for an extra 500 officers who can be deployed along the Channel coast and the building of a new detention centre in France, which is due to become fully operational at the end of 2026.
“The real game-changer would be the agreement of a rapid-returns deal but that is very much up in the air,” says Dr Walsh. “The question that also has to be asked is: what’s in it for the French? Even then a lot would depend on how many migrants are returned to France and how rapidly.”
The EU member states signed a new migration and asylum pact earlier this year, which is due to come into effect over the next two years. The new rules have been in the works since 2015. Migrants will be subject to tougher pre-entry screening, including identification and health and security checks. It also requires all EU member states to shoulder their share of responsibility for asylum seekers.
“All the noises emanating from Brussels suggest that the UK shouldn’t expect a bespoke arrangement and the best it can expect is to become a signature to that pact,” says Dr Walsh. “That would allow for the return of some migrants to the continent but only in exchange for taking in some asylum seekers. However, it’s very early days to even speculate how things might shake out.”
There is much commentary in France that Macron has given Barnier the nod because, firstly, he’s not too unpalatable to any one party but, secondly, in the hope of heading off the electoral advances made by Marine Le Pen’s far-Right National Rally and the Leftist New Popular Front alliance.
Barnier still needs to win a vote of confidence in the lower house of the French parliament and then form a government that won’t immediately collapse under the weight of too many different warring factions.
Given the New Popular Front, which won the most seats but fell short of an absolute majority in the election, has already sworn to back no-confidence motions against Barnier in the National Assembly, he will need tacit support from the far-Right to avoid being toppled.
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If successful, he will be tasked with marshalling critical finance bills through parliament, which, by tradition, opposition parties in France vote against regardless of their content. To achieve this, he will likely have to balance the demands of the various parties in other key areas, including pensions and the minimum wage.
Barnier will also come under particular pressure to follow through on his rhetoric and adopt a tough stance on migration – a hobby-horse for the French far-Right – with potential knock-on effects for Britain. Any tightening of France’s borders, for example, could mean fewer migrants reaching Calais, and ultimately attempting to cross the channel.
There is much commentary in France that Macron has given Barnier the nod because, firstly, he’s not too unpalatable to any one party but, secondly, in the hope of heading off the electoral advances made by Marine Le Pen’s far-Right National Rally and the Leftist New Popular Front alliance.
Barnier still needs to win a vote of confidence in the lower house of the French parliament and then form a government that won’t immediately collapse under the weight of too many different warring factions.
If successful, he will be tasked with marshalling critical finance bills through parliament, which, by tradition, opposition parties in France vote against regardless of their content. To achieve this, he will likely have to balance the demands of the various parties in other key areas, including pensions, the minimum wage and immigration.
Le Pen, whose party came third in the summer election, has already insisted her party must be part of any government led by Barnier: “We will demand that the new head of government respects the 11 million French people who voted for the Rassemblement National [National Rally], and respects them and their ideas.”
The other side of the Channel, meanwhile, Labour has made cracking down on migrant crossings one of its main pledges in government, with the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper promising to “dismantle these dangerous and criminal smuggler gangs and to strengthen border security”. In its first fortnight in office, the government scrapped the controversial Rwanda deportation scheme and ditched elements of the Illegal Migration Act. The latter was designed to make it harder for small boat arrivals to claim asylum.
Lord Callanan, the Conservative life peer and a former member of the European Parliament, says there is little hope of Starmer and his administration solving the migration crisis now the Rwanda scheme has been scrapped, regardless of political developments in France.
“We’ve gone round all these policy avenues, and of course we should try and cooperate with France, of course we should try and crack down on people smuggling. Nobody’s arguing with that, this has all been tried and it hasn’t worked,” he says.
“You need to increase the disincentives for migrants to cross the channel and the Rwanda scheme was the best way of doing that… it was the one policy with the prospect of success. [And] of course we’ve seen a surge in crossings since [it was abandoned].”
Labour has said it plans to divert the money that would have been spent on the Rwanda policy – which had a price tag of roughly £300m – to tackling the smuggling gangs operating Channel crossings. This includes recruiting up to 100 new specialist intelligence and investigation officers at the National Crime Agency. These promises have sounded relatively hollow given that migration isn’t an issue that can be tackled by the UK alone.
Nevertheless, experts point out that net migration is now on a downward path, and is likely to fall this year and next when measures implemented by Sunak – which include setting a minimum salary threshold for workers and toughening up on visas for foreign students – start to take effect.
Similarly, Barnier’s appointment may – just may – indicate the stars are aligning for Starmer as the EU, through which many of the migrants to the UK must travel, starts getting to grips with its own problems in earnest and begins tightening up its borders.
Additional reporting by Natasha Leake