Mass deportations. Prison camps. Quitting the Refugee Convention and the UN Convention on Torture.
A shrug of the shoulders at the idea of the UK sending asylum seekers back to places like Afghanistan or Eritrea, where they could be tortured or executed.
“I’m really sorry, but we can’t be responsible for everything that happens in the whole of the world,” says Nigel Farage.
“Who is our priority?”
The Reform UK leader has been setting out his party’s new plans to address illegal migration in an interview with The Times newspaper – a set of policies, and a use of language, which would surely have been seen as extreme just a few years ago.
Only last autumn the Reform leader repeatedly shied away from the concept of “mass deportations”, describing the idea as “a political impossibility”.
But now he’s embraced Trump-style immigration rhetoric.
It’s not surprising that Reform want to capitalise on the outpouring of public anger over the use of hotels to house asylum seekers. The policy was started by the previous Conservative government, in response to housing shortages – and Labour has failed to make significant progress on its promise to stop it.
But all the major parties have shifted firmly to the right on this issue.
There’s been very little political criticism of the aggressiveness of Farage’s policy suggestions, and the premise that the UK should no longer offer sanctuary to anyone who arrives here illegally.
The Tory response has been to complain that he’s just copying the ideas they didn’t quite get round to implementing before calling the general election.
“Four months late, this big reveal is…
