Friday, August 29, 2025
Reform's masterplan starts to fall apart
Nigel Farage wants you to believe that Reform UK can round up and deport up to 600,000 people within the lifetime of a single Parliament. It cannot. This is not a serious policy. It is an unworkable plan built on political theatre, not reality.
Reform claims it can create secure facilities to hold 24,000 people every month for deportation, equal to 288,000 removals a year. That would require building 24,000 detention spaces in just 18 months. No government has ever come close to delivering anything of that scale. For comparison, Boris Johnson’s government promised 20,000 new prison places and managed to open just one prison in five years, largely because of planning disputes and delays.
Even if Reform somehow built these facilities, the cost would be astronomical. At £500,000 per bed for secure, escape-proof centres, the price tag would be around £12 billion before a single person is removed. Reform claims it can cut costs with “modular accommodation” in remote areas, but such sites would struggle to meet basic security standards and would face fierce local opposition.
The logistics are even worse. Reform says it will remove 6,000 people every week, requiring five full flights every single day, all year round, with around 158 people per plane. That figure is three times higher than the current capacity of the most heavily packed deportation flights. The Home Office does not have the aircraft, the staff, the infrastructure, or the international agreements to make this possible.
To deliver this, Reform would also need sweeping new laws to fast-track people into detention and override their right to a fair hearing. Similar schemes have already been tried and ruled unlawful by the courts. Even if they tore up the European Convention on Human Rights and other international treaties, drafting watertight legislation of this scale would take years. And without international agreements, there is nowhere for these planes to land.
Reform’s plan is not credible. It is an extreme and unworkable fantasy designed to inflame division and distract from the real issues this country faces. It will waste billions, damage Britain’s standing in the world, and unleash untold chaos without fixing a single problem.
And indeed, even Farage has accepted that he might have gone too far with his little masterplan. As the Independent reports, he has rowed back on plans to deport children as part of Reform UK’s strategy to tackle illegal migration.
The paper says that the Reform leader had pledged on Tuesday to detain and deport up to 600,000 people with no right to be in the UK, including anyone who arrived in Britain after crossing the Channel in a small boat.
When asked if this number would include women and children, Mr Farage said: “Yes, women and children, everybody on arrival, will be detained.” But this is no longer the case:
Mr Farage said he accepted that “how we deal with children is a much more complicated and difficult issue” and acknowledged that those protesting across the UK were not doing so “because of the few children coming”, but added that the “only way we will stop the boats is by detaining and deporting absolutely anyone” who crosses the Channel.
“If you come to the UK illegally, you will be detained and deported and never, ever allowed to stay, period. That is our big message from today,” he said.
But on Wednesday, Mr Farage insisted at a press conference in Broxburn, West Lothian that he had been “very, very clear” that the party was focused on “illegal males” and “not even discussing women and children at this stage”.
He added: “The news reports that said that after my conference yesterday were wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Pressed on whether he now meant women and children would be “exempt”, he said: “I didn’t say exempt forever, but at this stage it’s not part of our plan for the next five years.”
Mr Farage later sought to clarify his comments, saying there had been a “slight confusion” and he had not understood the “context” of the question.
He told broadcasters: “Deporting children is a very difficult thing to do. Who do they go to, what are the wards of care? Women and children, intimating families that have been here illegally for some years, are they top of our list? No.”
Asked again if women and children would be deported, he said: “If a single woman etc comes to Britain, they will be detained and deported. If a woman comes with children, we will work out the best thing to do.”
As the Liberal Democrats commented, the U-turn shows that Farage has “taken as much time reading his own plan as he does his constituents’ emails”. His undeliverable right-wing wet dream is falling apart already.
Mr Farage said he accepted that “how we deal with children is a much more complicated and difficult issue” and acknowledged that those protesting across the UK were not doing so “because of the few children coming”, but added that the “only way we will stop the boats is by detaining and deporting absolutely anyone” who crosses the Channel.
“If you come to the UK illegally, you will be detained and deported and never, ever allowed to stay, period. That is our big message from today,” he said.
But on Wednesday, Mr Farage insisted at a press conference in Broxburn, West Lothian that he had been “very, very clear” that the party was focused on “illegal males” and “not even discussing women and children at this stage”.
He added: “The news reports that said that after my conference yesterday were wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Pressed on whether he now meant women and children would be “exempt”, he said: “I didn’t say exempt forever, but at this stage it’s not part of our plan for the next five years.”
Mr Farage later sought to clarify his comments, saying there had been a “slight confusion” and he had not understood the “context” of the question.
He told broadcasters: “Deporting children is a very difficult thing to do. Who do they go to, what are the wards of care? Women and children, intimating families that have been here illegally for some years, are they top of our list? No.”
Asked again if women and children would be deported, he said: “If a single woman etc comes to Britain, they will be detained and deported. If a woman comes with children, we will work out the best thing to do.”
As the Liberal Democrats commented, the U-turn shows that Farage has “taken as much time reading his own plan as he does his constituents’ emails”. His undeliverable right-wing wet dream is falling apart already.
