We are a few months away from a general election in the UK (for an election timetable - /SimonGrayson/uk-general-election-which-month-in-6ab8406103dd )

Over the past few months it has become clear that the Tories want to fight this election on asylum and immigration, specifically on small boat crossings and Rishi Sunak’s pledge to “Stop the Boats”.

On the day that Parliament is dissolved for a general election, will year-to-date boat crossings be down on 2023’s figure?

The source for this market will be the Spectator’s data page here (Take a look for the line chart called “small boat crossings” which has a line for 2024 and for each of the past few years):

https://data.spectator.co.uk/asylum

If it’s close, I will give it a little while for the graph to be updated past the date when Parliament is dissolved and base it on the figures for the dissolving date.

If that page moves, I’ll look at the page they’ve moved it to. If the Spectator stop updating that graph or they remove it entirely, I will endeavour to find the Home Office/Border Force data that it’s based on or to resolve the market as accurately as possible given publicly available data.