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The definition of insanity is often said to be "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". In 2021, after 27 died in a fatal Channel crossing, Boris Johnson vowed to hunt down the people-smuggling gangs that were exposing Britain's porous borders.

And three years later, Keir Starmer told the country he would "smash the gangs". The same could be said of expecting the French to stop Channel migrant crossings. On the day of that fatal crossing I mentioned, I was on a beach in Wimereux as the French police stood by while dozens of people carried a boat over hundreds of yards to the water.

Their own intervention? They turned their sirens on.

The French interior minister at the time, Gerald Darmanin, was said to have been shocked by the bodies piling up on the quayside in Calais. But over the course of the subsequent years, concern intensified over interception rates.

And in 2023, Rishi Sunak vowed to hand Emmanuel Macron £475million. The interception rate then was around 50%. It's dropped to a third.

But the Government has decided to hand out another £660million. And only £160million of it is dependent on results.

So, looking at that one number, do you think the definition of insanity still applies here?

By 2029, France will have received more than £1.3billion in taxpayers' money.

Does anyone realistically think the crossings will have stopped by then?

Labour's critics have proposed a series of policies they think will end the crisis - including detaining and deporting every arrival and sending them back to countries such as Afghanistan.

But Keir Starmer and Shabana Mahmood have refused to go that far.

In effect, they've adopting a similar approach to the past - but trying to do it better.

And the Home Secretary's comments at a press conference in Dunkirk perhaps offered a key insight: "We will now have flexibility to find things that we know are working and adapting to the practices of the gangs, and not focus on activity that isn't making the difference that we both clearly want to see."

But migrants will still bank on crossing the Channel and hanging around in the country for years.

As one Border Force source told me: "If you are not part of Operation Hillmore, you could be here five to eight years before anyone catches up to you.

"If you want to work here and send money back, it is much much easier to do that here."

And if migrants take the gamble, it's likely we'll all be sitting in three years time, when the contract runs out, wondering if we truly are insane.