Nigel Farage raised fears yesterday of Britain descending into ‘disorder on a huge scale’ as he stood by his plans for ‘mass deportation’ of asylum seekers.
The Reform UK leader warned of ‘much, much deeper’ unrest than the 1990 poll tax riots if his radical blueprint to combat illegal immigration was not implemented.
But he faced a furious response, with Labour accusing him of ‘another pie in the sky policy’ while the Tories said he was ‘recycling’ their own ideas.
This week, Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch will seek to regain the initiative on the small-boats crisis by hosting a meeting of Tory councillors to help them challenge asylum hotels in their areas.
Speaking after last week’s successful legal challenge by a Tory-run council in Epping, Essex, to block asylum seekers from lodging at a local hotel, Ms Badenoch will say she is ‘determined to give other excellent Conservative councillors the tools they need to take on this incompetent Labour government’.
However, in an interview this weekend, Mr Farage sought to outflank both parties with a £10 billion programme of mass deportations involving five migrant flights leaving the UK every day.
His sweeping, five-year ‘Operation Restoring Justice’ plan would also bar small-boat migrants from claiming asylum in the UK. Those awaiting deportation would be held in detention centres on ‘surplus’ RAF bases capable of holding 24,000 people within 18 months.
And the UK would leave the European Convention on Human Rights and derogate from the UN Convention Against Torture to make possible his deportation plan.
Nigel Farage raised fears yesterday of Britain descending into ‘disorder on a huge scale’ as he stood by his plans for ‘mass deportation’ of asylum seekers
Pictured: Protestors at a demonstration against the Poll Tax. The Reform UK leader warned of ‘much, much deeper’ unrest than the 1990 poll tax riots if his radical blueprint to combat illegal immigration was not implemented
Pictured: A protestor hanging on a pole at the height of the Poll Tax Riot in 1990
On the back of those moves, he told The Times that there would be attempts to look to ‘third countries’ such as Rwanda and Albania to house asylum seekers, and to use British Overseas Territories such as Ascension Island as a fall-back.
Mr Farage also outlined plans to use the UK’s ‘diplomatic muscle’ to do migrants-return deals with Afghanistan and Eritrea, both major sources of small-boat migrants, despite fears over their countries’ human rights abuses.
But he told the Mail on Sunday: ‘I can’t be responsible for every despotic regime around the world, and the absolute priority is to protect the British people.’
He added that ‘if we don’t sort this out there is going to be disorder on a huge scale’, which would be ‘much, much more concerning’ than the 1990 poll tax riots.
