At a recent rally in Kent, Reform UK announced their new pledge to suspend the UK’s asylum system “for up to five years” if they get into office, and to deport all criminals.
Instead of focusing on making the asylum system more efficient, or supporting people fleeing abject horror in many cases, Farage would rather have them driven into hiding. Ultimately, given the choice between giving people the opportunity to find stability and enrich our society and work force, or leaving them to the wolves of their home nations, Reform UK is all too happy to petulantly shout that “Britain is full.”
But we already knew this. Depressingly, what surprised me about this announcement was the fact that it wasn’t already part of their policies. It’s hardly ground-breaking news that Reform UK delights in the idea of slashing migrant numbers and ‘getting Britain back,’ so what has sparked this new announcement?
Nigel Farage’s popularity has come to a significant plateau recently, being stuck with his lowest approval ratings (down 26 per cent) since the 2024 general election for nearly six months now. Burnham’s popularity, however, has been consistently positive (currently sitting at +13 per cent), and even Kemi Badenoch has seen a rise in support (going from -14 per cent to +1.7 between May and October). So it might seem that Farage’s latest declaration is simply an attention plea, responding to Labour and the Tories bouncing back from the populism wave of the past few years.
The encouraging new announcements from Labour (new social housing, initiatives to end homelessness, a national care service, etc.) could lull one into thinking that the UK may now be heading in a better direction, away from Tory incompetence and austerity, and without Starmer’s politically disastrous u-turns. Nonetheless, it’s risky to believe with complete certainty that we’re out of the woods with the rampant far-right of the UK.
Farage’s message of suspending the asylum system, to the media-illiterate of our population, is digestible; it is a clear, simple, and memorable message, differentiating Reform from the other UK parties as the people who will ‘do’ something about immigration. It taps into potential public anxieties surrounding safety and strain on public services. It removes all complex legal and legislative terms from the equation of immigration, and completely simplifies the systems we already have in place in order to frame them as inadequate.
The actual facts are, however, that small boat crossings have decreased by around 40 per cent this year, and according to Burnham’s government, improving relations with Europe should hopefully aid the UK in managing its levels of immigration. The EU has a fingerprint database called Eurodac, allowing them to see if asylum seekers have already claimed asylum in another EU country and can be considered “irregular migrants.” If migrants had claimed asylum in another country, they are inadmissible to have left in order to claim asylum in a different one (under EU and UK law). Access to Eurodac would make for a far easier time processing migrants, but this is a privilege we lost due to Brexit. Who was it that was a major campaigner for Brexit? Does his last name perchance begin with F? Yeah, that sounds about right.
Similarly, criminals from other countries are being deported. Any non-British or Irish citizens who receive a sentence of 12 months or more are to be automatically deported by the Home Office under the Sentencing Act of 2026. Even the chances to appeal against deportation have been narrowed by recent rules, and new legislation has pushed for immediate deportation post-sentencing in order to ease prison capacity. If Farage wants to discuss criminality, he really needn’t look much further than his own party members.
All in all, Reform’s ‘new’ policies aren’t what scares me, but the fact that, to many in this country, he can make a wild proposal sound like a straightforward solution. That is something to keep us all on our toes.
“Nigel Farage” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
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Suspending the asylum system: A wild proposal framed as a reasonable solution
At a recent rally in Kent, Reform UK announced their new pledge to suspend the UK’s asylum system “for up to five years” if they get into office, and to deport all criminals.
Instead of focusing on making the asylum system more efficient, or supporting people fleeing abject horror in many cases, Farage would rather have them driven into hiding. Ultimately, given the choice between giving people the opportunity to find stability and enrich our society and work force, or leaving them to the wolves of their home nations, Reform UK is all too happy to petulantly shout that “Britain is full.”
But we already knew this. Depressingly, what surprised me about this announcement was the fact that it wasn’t already part of their policies. It’s hardly ground-breaking news that Reform UK delights in the idea of slashing migrant numbers and ‘getting Britain back,’ so what has sparked this new announcement?
Nigel Farage’s popularity has come to a significant plateau recently, being stuck with his lowest approval ratings (down 26 per cent) since the 2024 general election for nearly six months now. Burnham’s popularity, however, has been consistently positive (currently sitting at +13 per cent), and even Kemi Badenoch has seen a rise in support (going from -14 per cent to +1.7 between May and October). So it might seem that Farage’s latest declaration is simply an attention plea, responding to Labour and the Tories bouncing back from the populism wave of the past few years.
The encouraging new announcements from Labour (new social housing, initiatives to end homelessness, a national care service, etc.) could lull one into thinking that the UK may now be heading in a better direction, away from Tory incompetence and austerity, and without Starmer’s politically disastrous u-turns. Nonetheless, it’s risky to believe with complete certainty that we’re out of the woods with the rampant far-right of the UK.
Farage’s message of suspending the asylum system, to the media-illiterate of our population, is digestible; it is a clear, simple, and memorable message, differentiating Reform from the other UK parties as the people who will ‘do’ something about immigration. It taps into potential public anxieties surrounding safety and strain on public services. It removes all complex legal and legislative terms from the equation of immigration, and completely simplifies the systems we already have in place in order to frame them as inadequate.
The actual facts are, however, that small boat crossings have decreased by around 40 per cent this year, and according to Burnham’s government, improving relations with Europe should hopefully aid the UK in managing its levels of immigration. The EU has a fingerprint database called Eurodac, allowing them to see if asylum seekers have already claimed asylum in another EU country and can be considered “irregular migrants.” If migrants had claimed asylum in another country, they are inadmissible to have left in order to claim asylum in a different one (under EU and UK law). Access to Eurodac would make for a far easier time processing migrants, but this is a privilege we lost due to Brexit. Who was it that was a major campaigner for Brexit? Does his last name perchance begin with F? Yeah, that sounds about right.
Similarly, criminals from other countries are being deported. Any non-British or Irish citizens who receive a sentence of 12 months or more are to be automatically deported by the Home Office under the Sentencing Act of 2026. Even the chances to appeal against deportation have been narrowed by recent rules, and new legislation has pushed for immediate deportation post-sentencing in order to ease prison capacity. If Farage wants to discuss criminality, he really needn’t look much further than his own party members.
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All in all, Reform’s ‘new’ policies aren’t what scares me, but the fact that, to many in this country, he can make a wild proposal sound like a straightforward solution. That is something to keep us all on our toes.
“Nigel Farage” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
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