Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform Party in Britain. It only has four MPs but is leading opinion polls. Photo / Oli Scarff, AFP
Nigel Farage vowed to expel tens of thousands of asylum-seekers from Britain, tapping a policy deployed in the United States by President Donald Trump as he seeks to guide his populist Reform Party to power at the next general election.
Reform would carry out mass deportations of asylum-seekers, as well as removing Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights - “no ifs, no buts” - and scrapping the country’s Human Rights Act to remove legal routes of appeal, Farage said today in a speech.
A Reform-led government would also disapply for five years the 1951 Refugee Convention, he said, dubbing his programme “Operation Restoring Justice”.
“We will detain all illegal migrants who come, and we will do so immediately,” Farage said in Oxfordshire.
“If you come to the United Kingdom illegally, you will be detained and deported and never, ever allowed to stay, period,” he said. “That is our big message from today.”
Farage’s approach is the most draconian policy yet advanced by any of the UK’s major parties to crack down on a record level of irregular migration that’s seen more than 50,000 asylum-seekers cross the English Channel in small boats from France since Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Government took power in July 2024.
It has echoes of Trump’s aggressive policy of mass deportations as his Administration pursues an estimated 11 million people in the US who lack permanent legal status.
Responding to Farage’s announcement, Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council denounced “toxic narratives” that dehumanise refugees and fuel “fear and division across our country.
Naomi Smith at Best for Britain said Reform’s plan to remove rights and protections “is right out of the authoritarian playbook”.
Trump’s deportation campaign has barrelled through norms that had shaped the American immigration debate for decades.
The Administration has flown migrants to overseas detention centres and deployed troops to support sweeps by border agents, drawing allegations of rights abuses and executive overreach.
“Whatever you think of President Trump, he has cut border crossings by 97%,” Reform official Zia Yusuf - the party’s former chairman - said alongside Farage. Yusuf didn’t specify what data he was referring to.
US national apprehensions of inadmissible individuals at the border fell 90% in July from a year earlier, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.
Yusuf estimated that under the party’s plan the UK would build capacity to detain as many as 24,000 migrants in an overall programme costing £10 billion ($23b) over five years but saving £17b in the same period.
He didn’t provide any details of those calculations, and Farage brushed away a sceptical question about the costings by saying “Zia’s really good at maths”.
There are also questions around Britain’s ability to abrogate from the ECHR, a post-war convention to promote human rights, individual freedoms, and democracy that entered force in 1953 which Britain was the first country to sign.
That’s because it could undermine Britain’s relations with Europe, jeopardise the UK’s post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union - which references the rights highlighted in the treaty, and also affect the Good Friday Agreement governing peace in Northern Ireland.
Today, Farage said the latter deal could be renegotiated, though it would take time.
“The ECHR underpins key international agreements, on trade, security, migration and the Good Friday Agreement,” Starmer’s spokesman, Dave Pares, told reporters today.
“Anyone who is proposing to renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement is not serious.”
Pares said the Government was focused on “taking action that will make a difference” including tightening the application of ECHR provisions, striking agreements on immigration with countries including France and Germany and speeding up the processing of asylum-seekers.
Labour is grappling with how to cut immigration by both legal and irregular routes, after both rose to records in recent years.
Surging numbers of those crossing in small boats from France has been a particular focus, with Starmer pledging to “smash the gangs” of people smugglers, after cancelling the previous Conservative government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
More than 28,000 migrants have made the Channel crossing so far this year - the most on record for the same period - while more than 51,000 have done so since Starmer took power following the general election in July last year.
Data released last week also showed that in the year through June, asylum claims totalled 111,084 - another record.
While Britain ranks fifth out of 32 European countries in terms of annual applications, it falls to 17th when measured on a per capita basis, according to data compiled by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.
While the next general election isn’t due until mid-2029 at the latest, Farage is seeking to tap the public mood and extend Reform’s lead in the polls over the long-established duopoly of British politics, Labour and the Conservatives.
A survey by Ipsos showed last week that Britons think immigration is the most important issue facing the country - with 48% citing it as a concern, compared to 33% who cited the economy.
The evidence so far is Reform’s focus on its anti-immigration message is paying off.
The party has consistently led national polling since April, and Starmer has identified it as Labour’s main threat, despite it only having four Members of Parliament in the 650-seat House of Commons.
Reform’s announcement comes after a weekend in which anti-immigration protests took place around the country from Bristol in southwest England to Aberdeen in Scotland.
That was sparked in part by a court ruling last week that the Bell Hotel in Epping, northeast of London, should not be used to house asylum-seekers because it had not sought the correct planning permissions.
Other councils have vowed to follow suit and appeal against the use of hotels in their areas.
Farage littered his remarks with emotive turns of phrase, including describing the influx of immigrants to the UK as an “invasion” that threatens the safety of women and children on Britain’s streets.
“We are not very far away from major civil disorder,” he said.
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