𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

While every political party has launched – usually accompanied by much fanfare – their way of solving the migrant boat crossing issue, it’s safe to say none have ever gone anywhere near as far as Nigel Farage steered Reform UK last week. But just as there is much to admire in his boldness, the warning notes of caution are enough for a symphony. Deporting as many as 600,000 migrants, roughly the population of Glasgow, will take guts, the hide of a rhinoceros and plenty of cash – and this financial hurdle was the first at which Mr Farage became unseated.

Challenged as to how Reform’s plan would cost just £10 billion when a respected economic think tank had costed at £47.5 billion, all he could come up with was his party was “better at maths.” Equally, where the camps that would hold these hundreds of thousands awaiting deportation would be located produced no clear response.

But, to knock the plan is to ignore the salient fact that the control of migration into this country is now the number one concern for the nation and its voters, even outstripping both the NHS and the economy.

And it also helps explain the calamitous drop in popularity ratings for both Sir Keir Starmer and his government. A poll last week showed 71% of respondents believe the PM is handling this issue badly – and it will cause sleepless nights for his party machine when they learn 56% of them vote Labour.

Credit therefore to Mr. Farage who has been prepared to endure a wide range of insults from being labelled a ‘Little Englander’ to an outright racist. Neither is true.

Rather he is a politician who is in tune with the electorate. Yes, his assertion that the country is “not very far away from major civil disorder” is probably over the top, but anxiety rightly manifests itself as people see some of these new arrivals convicted of, or charged with serious crimes including sexual offences.

As Farage delivers his well-choregraphed plan with the skill of a ship’s pilot, the other two main parties are left trailing in his wake.

Trapped in his lawyerly bubble, Sir Keir falls back on trying to falsely pretend leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) would put us on the same level as Russia and Belarus.

Equally, Kemi Badenoch seeking to pretend Farage has stolen their ideas is vapid nonsense. They have just exited Number 10 after more than a decade in power and didn’t explore any of the ideas put forward in their last months in office. Indeed, they didn’t even have the nerve to push through with their Rwanda scheme.

If, as is being whispered, Badenoch now uses their party conference to say a Conservative government would be prepared to leave the ECHR it will merely look as if they’ve been bullied into it by Reform.

Whether a plan that would see the UK paying the murderous Taliban to accept people back in Afghanistan, funnelling cash to the Ayatollah in Iran or sending women back to the Sudan where rape is seen as an acceptable tactic of war could ever be sold to the British public is debatable.

But it seems highly likely that for the Tories it will stop them rather than their fatuous bid to ‘Stop the Boats,’ while at the same time smashing the credibility of a government that pledged to ‘Smash the Gangs.’