The figurehead of the populist right in the United Kingdom has pledged to deport hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and withdraw the country from international human rights treaties.
But experts say Nigel Farage’s plans – billed as the most radical immigration overhaul in modern British politics – are unlikely to ever be delivered.
Farage, whose Reform UK party currently leads national opinion polls despite holding just four parliamentary seats won in last year’s election, said a government led by him would withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and repeal the Human Rights Act in order to reverse a movement of people into the country that he claims threatens national security.
“The mood in the country around this issue is a mix between total despair and rising anger,” Farage told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday. “It is an invasion, as these young men illegally break into our country.”
Human rights campaigners and lawyers have criticized both the ethics and the viability of Farage’s proposals.
Immigration has become the dominant issue for British voters, however, eclipsing the economy as an issue in recent opinion polls.
In 2024, the UK received a record 108,100 asylum applications, a 20% increase from the previous year.
Government figures released Monday showed that more than 28,000 people have already crossed the English Channel from France in small boats this year, a 46% rise on the same period in 2024.
In response, Reform’s policy blueprint, branded “Operation Restoring Justice,” envisages building detention centers on military sites to hold up to 24,000 people at a time – a scale Reform claims would enable 288,000 deportations each year.
The party also suggested on Tuesday that as many as 600,000 asylum seekers could be deported in the first parliament of a Reform UK government.
‘Morally repugnant’
Yet Farage’s plans appear at odds with the law.
“Frankly, this is nothing more than a dangerous fantasy,” Laura Smith, co-head of legal at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, told CNN Tuesday. “Besides it being morally repugnant to send people to countries where they are at risk of torture and death, it is a mistake to consider that the government cannot do so purely because of international legal agreements.”
“If we were not party to such agreements, the common law history developed in the UK would step in to prevent such heinous actions by the government,” she added.
Roberta Haslam, a partner at Bindmans LLP, told CNN that Farage’s pledge was “unworkable.” The cost of removing hundreds of thousands of people, she said, would be “astronomical.”
“The abandoned Rwanda plan shows how difficult these arrangements can be,” she added, referring to a controversial plan by the previous UK government to send asylum seekers to Rwanda that was unanimously ruled unlawful by the country’s Supreme Court in 2023.
“The process is likely to be very time-consuming, costly and will no doubt diminish the UK’s status and influence globally on international human rights issues,” Haslam added.
Under existing British legislation, entering the country without a visa or prior authorization is a criminal offense, punishable by up to four years in prison.
However, international conventions protect anyone who immediately claims asylum on arrival. Such individuals cannot be prosecuted while their case is pending, and if their claim is successful, cannot be punished for the way they entered.
In practice, arriving by small boat is only unlawful if no asylum claim is made – or if that claim is ultimately rejected.
Farage’s blueprint would go much further than the Conservative Party’s failed Rwanda deportation scheme.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today program, Zia Yusuf, the head of Reform’s government efficiency department, said a Reform government would even consider paying Afghanistan’s Taliban ruler to accept the return of migrants who entered the UK illegally.
“We have a £2 billion ($2.7 billion) budget to offer countries,” Yusuf said, insisting the figure was “not a drop in the ocean.”
“This country already gives £151 million a year to Afghanistan in the form of foreign aid,” he added. “British people have had enough of their goodwill being taken advantage of.”
Farage on Tuesday warned that “without action” on immigration he feared “anger will grow” in the country.
Yet when pressed on which air force bases might host deportation flights – a central feature of the plan – he was unable to name a single site.
Kolbassia Haoussou, director of UK charity Freedom from Torture, warned the plans to deport people to places where they remain at risk of torture also strike at Britons’ moral code.
“This is not who we are as a country,” he said. “For centuries, the UK has been a leading voice against torture, helping to shape the very international laws that Reform proposes we destroy.”
“These laws were created in the aftermath of the Second World War to protect us all,” Haoussou, added. “If Britain were to abandon this legacy it would hand repressive regimes around the world a gift and undermine one of humanity’s clearest moral lines.”