{"id":376960,"date":"2025-08-27T06:42:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T06:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/376960\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T06:42:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T06:42:13","slug":"wednesday-briefing-how-britains-asylum-debate-is-shifting-further-to-the-right-nigel-farage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/376960\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday briefing: How Britain\u2019s asylum debate is shifting further to the right | Nigel Farage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. The late Ambalavaner Sivanandan, a leading voice in Britain\u2019s anti-racist struggle, remarked<\/a>: \u201cWhat Enoch Powell says today, the Conservative party says tomorrow, and the Labour party legislates on the day after.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has been 50 years since Sivanandan made that observation, yet his point \u2013 that far-right rhetoric can creep into the mainstream and harden into government policy \u2013 feels as relevant now as ever before.<\/p>\n

All eyes were on Nigel Farage, leader of Reform, at a press conference yesterday morning as he launched<\/a> \u201cOperation Restoring Justice\u201d: a five-year plan to detain and deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants.<\/p>\n

This radical proposal, which would shred the postwar consensus on universal human rights, is pitched as a deterrent to people seeking asylum in the UK. Farage stood alongside former party chair Zia Yusuf as they pledged to deport up to 600,000 people during the lifetime of a first Reform parliament.<\/p>\n

My first instinct as a journalist was to ask whether such a plan would even work, but this conference represents something much bigger than that. The real question is how much this rhetoric shifts the Overton window on the right to seek asylum in the UK, and whether we are heading towards a two-tier system of human rights. One for us, and another for those we choose to call outsiders.<\/p>\n

To better understand this extraordinary moment in British politics, I spoke to the Guardian political correspondent Aletha Adu<\/strong>, who attended the Reform conference. That\u2019s after the headlines.<\/p>\n

Five big stories<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    Gaza <\/strong>| The UN has demanded that Israel\u2019s investigations into unlawful killings<\/a> in Gaza yield results and ensure accountability.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    US news <\/strong>| Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs<\/a> on most US imports from India, making good on a threat to punish one of the world\u2019s largest economies over its purchases of discounted Russian oil<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    UK news <\/strong>| This summer is set to be the warmest on record<\/a> for the UK, the Met Office has said, after the country experienced four heatwaves.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  4. \n

    France <\/strong>| One of France\u2019s most popular actors, Dany Boon, will have a starring role in court <\/a>when a fake Irish aristocrat goes on trial accused of cheating him out of millions of euros.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  5. \n

    Art <\/strong>| More than 80 years after it was looted by the Nazis from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam, a portrait by an Italian master has been spotted<\/a> on the website of an estate agent advertising a house for sale in Argentina.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In depth: Us v ThemProtesters gather for an anti-immigration demonstration outside the New Bridge Hotel in Newcastle. Photograph: Gary Calton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

    Nigel Farage did not hold back, setting out a maximalist and radical vision at yesterday\u2019s event at London Oxford airport. Warning of a \u201cgenuine threat to public order\u201d without action on illegal migration, he vowed to:<\/p>\n

    Take Britain out of the European convention on human rights, the 1951 refugee convention, the UN convention against torture, and the Council of Europe anti-trafficking convention.<\/p>\n

    Detain undocumented migrants indefinitely in camps, with new accommodation for 24,000 people built on \u201csurplus\u201d military bases.<\/p>\n

    Deport people to countries including Afghanistan and Eritrea, even where they risk torture or death \u2013 with the party pledging to pay regimes, including the Taliban in Afghanistan, to take them back.<\/p>\n

    Detain and deport women and children alongside men.<\/p>\n

    Impose a lifetime ban on re-entry for anyone deported, and criminalise re-entry after deportation or the deliberate destruction of identity documents, carrying a sentence of up to five years in prison.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI haven\u2019t seen anything like this,\u201d Aletha Adu tells me straight off the back of attending the press conference. Despite the wide-ranging plan, with huge national and international implications, journalists like Aletha were only given a four-page document. \u201cThere\u2019s little to no detail at all. It was chaos. There were lots of cheers to him for deflecting questions around whether he would sleep at night after sending people back to countries where they could be tortured or persecuted.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Supporters remained silent when Farage was not able to answer the simplest of questions, such as what military bases he would use, she adds. But coming up short on the detail has never been an obstacle for Farage.<\/p>\n

    \u201cHe is able to force the biggest party to react to his framing. And that is forcing a lot of the public to also have a bigger rethink on their views on British politics,\u201d Aletha said.<\/p>\n

    Dominating the agenda<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Summer recess is normally a time for MPs of all parties to rest and recharge, before returning to the brutal business of politics in the autumn. But Farage has taken a notably different approach.<\/p>\n

    He kicked off the summer going on tour decrying \u201clawless\u201d<\/a> Britain and launching his campaign to get a grip on crime; by promising to spend \u00a317bn on new prisons<\/a> built on military bases, 30,000 more police officers a year, and to rent cells for notorious murderers and others in El Salvador.<\/p>\n

    He bridged crime and migration by insisting the two are intrinsically linked. Flanked by Reform\u2019s senior female figures, Sarah Pochin, the MP for Runcorn, and Andrea Jenkyns, the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, he argued that migrants from countries with \u201cmedieval\u201d views on women pose a danger to women and girls in Britain.<\/p>\n

    The debate was further inflamed by reports that an asylum seeker allegedly assaulted a teenage girl in Essex, sparking protests outside the hotel where he was housed and at sites elsewhere in the country.<\/p>\n

    At every point this summer, Farage and Reform were on the front foot, while the government was left defending the policy of housing asylum seekers in hotels<\/a>, a system largely inherited from the Conservatives.<\/p>\n

    \u201cReform have been using a lot of rallies and media appearances to frame Keir Starmer\u2019s government as mishandling the \u2018small boats crisis\u2019. They have been saying Labour have lost control of the borders. They have been using this time during recess to position themselves as the hard line alternative to both the Tories and Labour,\u201d Aletha said.<\/p>\n

    \u201cIt\u2019s definitely piled the pressure on the Labour government to sharpen their own messaging and we saw that on Tuesday\u2019s front pages,\u201d which splashed the announcement that the UK government was preparing to send 100 small boat migrants back to France.<\/p>\n

    If you look back at Britain\u2019s chequered history with asylum seekers, sitting governments have often reacted to the threat of the populist right. In the early 2000s, Tony Blair\u2019s government introduced a crackdown that hoped to challenge rising support for far-right parties across Europe.<\/p>\n

    In 2002, his government removed asylum seekers\u2019 right to work and pledged to halve the number of claims. When those policies left people destitute, a then up-and-coming human rights barrister challenged the new rules<\/a> in court in 2003, describing them as \u201cinhumane\u201d. His name? Keir Starmer.<\/p>\n

    A challenge to <\/strong>human rights <\/strong><\/p>\n

    Many of our most fundamental human rights, among them the right to be recognised as a person before the law, freedom from torture, and protection against arbitrary arrest, detention or exile, were established in the aftermath of the second world war. Their universality was historic: they applied to everyone, regardless of background. Reform now vows to take a sledgehammer to those laws and conventions.<\/p>\n

    Farage\u2019s plan to deport hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, including women and children, and to withdraw the UK from human rights frameworks has, unsurprisingly, provoked a torrent of condemnation.<\/p>\n

    Kolbassia Haoussou, director of survivor leadership at Freedom from Torture, described<\/a> the plan as \u201ca gift to repressive regimes\u201d and warned Britain would be abandoning one of humanity\u2019s \u201cclearest moral lines\u201d. \u201cThis is not who we are as a country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

    The Liberal Democrats and the Greens have also criticised the plan on ethical grounds. The Liberal Democrats\u2019 deputy leader Daisy Cooper condemned Reform\u2019s mass deportation plan for \u201cripping up\u201d human rights and involving potential payments to autocratic regimes. The Green party MP Ellie Chowns denounced Farage\u2019s \u201cinflammatory\u201d rhetoric as designed to whip up public anger and said the proposals were \u201cunworkable\u201d.<\/p>\n

    Ball is in Labour\u2019s court<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Parliament is set to return within the next few weeks and Labour will do so in an uncomfortable position. It has to respond to the agenda that Reform has set.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe prime minister\u2019s spokesperson did not rule out paying the Taliban to take back asylum seekers. This scary rhetoric shows this is a government under pressure to prove to [certain] voters\u2026 that they can also be tough when it comes to dealing with asylum seekers and dealing with this \u2018small boat crisis\u2019,\u201d Aletha said.<\/p>\n

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    She adds that Reform\u2019s aim is for Keir Starmer to return after summer recess feeling as though he has lost the country, despite only being one year in power. \u201cLabour are not setting the tone at the moment, they are being pushed and pulled in all sorts of directions and it\u2019s not really feasible when you are actually in charge. You\u2019re supposed to be leading the agenda, not necessarily reacting to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Is there any chance that Labour will return this autumn making the case for immigration? Aletha suggests that is extremely unlikely. \u201cI have asked them previously about opening more safe routes to make sure people don\u2019t need to make this horrible crossing to get to this country and it\u2019s completely off the table. They said, \u2018we have enough safe routes\u2019.\u201d She adds it also does not seem possible \u201cgiven the level of anger coming from people politically aligned on the hard right\u201d.<\/p>\n

    It is particularly striking that for some voters, even the extreme policy that Reform is advocating may not be enough. \u201cI spoke to a Reform insider at the press conference who told me, \u2018Even I\u2019m scared about interacting with some of our supporters. They\u2019re always angry. Nothing we say is good enough.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

    I suspect No 10 will be watching closely to see how Farage\u2019s plan lands with the public. It comes on the heels of a striking poll showing that 45% of respondents<\/a> support halting all immigration and deporting those who have arrived in recent years. The danger for Labour is clear: Farage might shift the country even further to the right.<\/p>\n

    The danger for the rest of us is that even Reform may not be able to handle the demands and response their rhetoric goes on to spark.<\/p>\n

    What else we\u2019ve been readingFriends sharing a joke while catching up on the pavement at the Notting Hill carnival. Photograph: Ollie Tikare<\/p>\n