Mayor of Calais in blast at Macron

THE boat tragedy triggered an outpouring of anger in France last night with the mayor of Calais blasting Emmanuel Macron’s government for failing to tackle the ‘mafia style’ smuggling gangs.

Senior figures in the port city demanded immediate action from the French authorities to stop the Channel becoming an ‘open-air graveyard’ and as deadly as the Mediterranean.

Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, said: ‘It’s the sort of human tragedy I’ve been fearing ever since I was elected.’

She said she had been warning the central government for ‘weeks and months’ that attempted Channel crossings were increasing and ‘that this sort of drama was bound to happen’.

Miss Bouchart said French authorities had failed to clamp down on a ‘mafia-style’ criminal operation that was more profitable than drugs. Migrants were paying as much as £6,000 to cross. ‘I say that enough is enough,’ she said.

Miss Bouchart accused the French president of failing to give French police the means to fight the people-smuggling gangs, despite £54million coming from the UK this year.

Pierre Henri Dumont, a Calais MP, said the French must act to move the migrants

‘I say that enough is enough’

from the city into central France. ‘My message to the French authorities is that we need to understand that if the migrant is in Calais – or around the Channel – they will try to cross the Channel,’ he said. ‘We need to move them, even if by force, to health centres in the middle of France.’

He added: ‘We must do everything to stop this drama as soon as possible. We need to ensure that the Channel doesn’t become an open-air graveyard. The Channel is becoming the new Mediterranean.

‘We all need, both sides of the Channel, to stop making migrants an internal argument with internal policies and try to figure out how to find a solution.’

French Right-wing presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen blamed the deaths on the French government’s lax attitude to smugglers. ‘Laxism in migratory matters leads to tragedies,’ she said.

Meanwhile, British MPs told Mr Macron to stop his posturing and do far more to tackle migrants crossing the Channel.

Tory Peter Bone accused the French president of turning a blind eye to the growing crisis because of his obsession with punishing the UK over Brexit and his desire to be re-elected next year. ‘That is completely unacceptable and people’s lives are being lost because of the French president playing politics,’ he said.