Trump Says Channel Migration and North Sea Drilling 'Killing' UK, Burnham Says He'll Be 'Pragmatic' on Oil

President Donald Trump used a Wednesday interview with GB News to declare that illegal immigration is 'killing' the United Kingdom, directly calling on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to address it. Trump made the comments the same day more than 500 migrants crossed the English Channel in small boats, according to the Daily Express, which reported the crossings came from 11 boats launched along the coast from Belgium to Dieppe, France.

'He's going to have to mention it because it's killing your country,' Trump said, referring to Starmer. Trump went further, framing the migration flow as continent-wide: 'They're coming from Africa. They're coming from South America. They're coming from different parts of Asia. They're invading Europe. It's an invasion, and the UK is a prime suspect.'

The numbers back up the scale of the crossings, if not Trump's rhetoric about motive. Home Office figures cited by the Express show 172 people crossed the Channel on one recent Wednesday, followed by 366 the next day across just three boats, and another 103 that Friday. Whether that constitutes an 'invasion' is a matter of political framing, not something these figures settle on their own. What the figures do show is a sustained, high-volume flow of small-boat crossings that successive UK governments, Labour and Conservative alike, have struggled to stop.

Downing Street has largely avoided addressing the migrant crisis head-on in recent weeks. When Downing Street's spokesman was asked this week whether the government wants asylum hotels closed, the answer was noncommittal: 'The work on that continues,' with no change to the approach being run by the Home Secretary.

That vagueness is a fair target for criticism. If a government faces a crisis serious enough to produce 500-plus crossings in a single day, silence on the specifics—whether hotels stay open, whether returns agreements get renegotiated, whether Channel patrols get more resources—raises legitimate questions for reporters to keep asking. Trump isn't wrong that Downing Street has said little in public beyond generalities.

The North Sea Question

Trump also revived his long-running push for the UK to expand North Sea oil and gas drilling. According to the BBC, Trump claimed in a social media post that 'the People of Aberdeen... are dancing in the streets' over prospects of expanded North Sea oil development.

Downing Street has not confirmed that characterization. The government's public position, tied to Labour's 2024 manifesto, has promised no new drilling licenses while honoring existing ones. Foreign Secretary and former Energy Secretary Ed Miliband previously called the Rosebank oil field license 'climate vandalism.'

Green Party leader Zack Polanski pushed back hard on any suggestion of loosened drilling rules, telling the BBC: 'Our country is burning. Crops are failing. Thousands have been killed by extreme heat. Allowing new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea will worsen the climate breakdown putting more lives at risk and doing untold damage to our economy.' Polanski's claim about climate-linked deaths reflects a genuine and widely-held position among climate advocates, though it's a projection about future risk, not a settled figure tied to a specific event.

Trump, meanwhile, framed drilling as a straightforward economic win, pointing to Norway's sovereign wealth fund as the model: 'Norway's got trillions of dollars in the bank. Scotland has a better part of the North Sea.' Norway's oil fund is real and well-documented, though it was built over five decades under a state-ownership model very different from the UK's licensing system, a distinction Trump's comments skip over entirely.

Neither policy question, migration or energy, has been resolved. The UK government has made no formal announcement changing North Sea licensing policy, and Downing Street has given no timeline for a decision on asylum hotels. The next concrete marker to watch is whether the Home Secretary's department produces any policy change on hotel closures, something No. 10 has so far only described as 'ongoing work.'