French police stood and watched migrants boarding dinghies today as total small boat crossings to England were believed to have passed 200,000.

The Daily Mail was at the scene at 4.30am in the very heart of Dunkirk, in front of the Radisson Blu hotel, when 40 migrants ran across the promenade and down to the waterline.

Around a dozen French police were there too, with two beach-buggies – funded by British taxpayers – but they did nothing to intervene as the multi-racial group headed for the sea.

As so often, the officers simply watched from a safe distance as the migrants, a mix of Africans, Middle-Easterners, and men from across Asia, stood in the waves up to their shins and waited for a ‘taxi-boat’ launched at a quieter spot along the coast to collect them.

Twenty minutes later, the taxi-boat dinghy arrived from the West, with some 30 people already aboard and straddling the sides, almost all in bright orange life-jackets.

As it pulled in close to the shore, those migrants waiting in the sea then proceeded to board.

All the while, although the police illuminated the scene with a searchlight, they did nothing to intervene.

There have been isolated occasions in which officers have used knives to slash occupied boats, amid repeated talk of tougher measures. One video emerged this week of a policeman running up to a loaded boat in ankle-deep water and puncturing it, leading to an immediate evacuation.

The Daily Mail was at the scene at 4.30am in the very heart of Dunkirk, in front of the Radisson Blu hotel, when 40 migrants ran across the promenade and down to the waterline

One of the groups was later seen catching the bus after failing to make the crossing

But as the Daily Mail watched today, police kept 50 yards from the dinghy while fresh passengers boarded it in shin-deep water. It is likely they feared causing potential drownings thanks to medium-sized waves.

As a result the dinghy eventually loaded and prepared to cross the Channel.

Not for the first time, however, a shoddy outboard motor too weak to push a 30ft dinghy carrying 60 passengers, and poor seamanship, did the job the Gendarmerie would not.

After half an hour of floundering, and some getting out and pushing, the migrants gave up, having failed to pull away from the wave-line, and disembarked, leaving the empty dinghy where it was.

The police stood by as the group of more than 60 – including two young women and one disabled man with a crutch, who needed two friends to help him – simply walked to a bus stop and got free transport, probably back to the ‘new jungle’ migrant camp five miles away at Grande Synthe.

It is likely they will be trying again within 24 hours.

Back at the beach, a rogue group of around a dozen Africans, none wearing life-jackets, raced across the sand to the abandoned dinghy – thinking they were getting lucky with a free ride to England.

Only on reaching it did they discover the police had finally acted, having eventually slashed and disabled the boat after its passengers got out.

Police kept 50 yards from the dinghy while some passengers boarded it in shin-deep water

A group of people wait on a beach in Dunkirk for a dinghy as they make a bid to cross the Channel

French police officers with beach buggies stand on the Dunkirk beach this morning

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to the Border Security Command compound in Dover, Kent, on Friday

A group of people are brought ashore in Dover, Kent

At the same time the officers drove half a mile down the beach – still in front of Dunkirk’s hotels and promenade – to where another group of around 20 migrants was openly waiting in the sea for a taxi-boat to come and pick them up.

On this occasion the officers did manage to encourage them to leave the beach.

But within hours, at least one other dinghy, possibly from further to the East from the new launchpad of Belgium, did appear to have successfully cross the Channel, escorted to British waters by a French patrol vessel.

The Mail watched that dinghy from the beach at Gravelines, as it reached the horizon.

Total migrant Channel crossings by small boat since 2018, when the dinghy crisis began, had reached 199,920 by Monday.

A single boat can carry 80. Keir Starmer’s promises to ‘smash the gangs’ behind people-smuggling remain unfulfilled.