Brexit leader Nigel Farage has argued that voters who want to end the Channel migrant crisis should reject the Westminster “uniparty” represented by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer, whom he argued are merely two sides of the same open borders coin.
In his first campaign event ahead of the July 4th general election, Reform UK party honorary president Nigel Farage said that this election will be defined by immigration, following the betrayal of Brexit voters by the governing “Conservative” party, which has allowed in record waves of both legal and illegal immigration into the country after promising to “take back control” of the nation’s borders following the withdrawal from the European Union.
Speaking from Dover — the main landing point for illegal boat migrants in Britain — Farage argued that neither the Tories nor Labour have an answer to stop the boats, branding Starmer’s plan of cracking down on criminal gangs as a “joke”. Farage noted, for instance, the failure of the government and police to stop drug gangs as an illustration of how effective the state has been at that approach so far.
Turning to the Tories, Farage said of Sunak’s Rwanda scheme of sending illegals to have their asylum claims processed in the East African nation it will never get off the ground given legal challenges at home and abroad, with the UK still being bound by the European Court on Human Rights (ECHR) which previously blocked migrant removals to Rwanda.
“Neither side has any credible policy,” he said while warning that the continued waves of mostly military-age males are “very dangerous” and represent a “national emergency” which threatens to destabilise Britain.
“I think this is very dangerous. You only have to look at what has happened in Sweden, in cities like Malmo, to see that a large influx of young males coming from an entirely different culture – and certainly coming from a culture in which women are not even regarded as second-class citizens – has had frankly disastrous social effects,” he said.
Farage argued that the only party with a viable solution to the crisis is Reform, the rebranded Brexit Party which he founded and continues to serve in a ceremonial role as honorary party president. The party advocates for leaving the ECHR and then adopting a ‘turn-back-the-boats’ approach à la former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s Operation Sovereign Borders, which all but eliminated illegal boat migration from Indonesia.
This will mean taking on the French, Farage acknowledged, given that the French Navy actively escorts illegals into British territorial waters before handing them over to the UK Border Force or the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).
“The escorting by the French navy is aiding and abetting criminal trafficking and if the French won’t cooperate, well, we may have to use the Royal Marines and send some people back to the beaches of France.
“I hope it never gets to that but it may have to come to that. We’ve given them a vast sum of money, it is not working, and the French navy should not be doing what it’s doing.”
Farage joked that he was not seeking a “declaration of war” with France, but said that Britain needs to finally step up and have serious conversations with “Monsieur Macron”.
The Brexit boss, who will not be running for parliament in this election — after claiming to have been wrong-footed by Sunak’s decision to call for a snap early election in July, which he said did not leave him enough time to campaign nationally for Reform UK and fight a local election concurrently.
Nevertheless, Farage has vowed to be an active force in the election, which he described as a building block for Reform’s growth as a national party, which he hopes will become a threat to topple the Tories as the main conservative party in Britain in the coming years. Despite not fighting for a seat, himself, the veteran political campaigner challenged both Prime Minister Sunak and Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer to debates on immigration.
During his address, Farage branded the two top candidates to become the next prime minister as having the “appearance and enthusiasm of middle managers” saying that he often “zones out” while trying to listen to Starmer and that Sunak appears “like a frightened rabbit”.
He also rejected the notion pushed by the Conservatives and Tory-friendly media that a vote for Reform is a vote for Labour.
“This election is a foregone conclusion. Labour are going to win and they’re going to win quite big and therefore you could argue that a vote for the Conservative Party is a wasted vote. Given that you know Labour are going to win, why not vote for something that you actually believe in?”