How realistic are Reform’s deportation plans?

0:00Hello, Ed Conway here. Here is what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how together they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow. Hi, I'm Sophie Ridge and this is the Sky News Daily. Today we're asking how realistic are reforms deportation plans?

0:38Hello, Ed Conway here. Here's what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how, together, they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow. This issue has become a scourge of modern Britain. Just think about the hotels. Think about the houses of multiple occupancy.

1:20And not just the cost of it, but think how unfair that is. unfair to the 1.3 million British people currently on the social housing list. Unfair to those who have legally made their way into the United Kingdom. That's Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. I don't need to introduce him. I'm sure you know exactly who he is. And today is really significant because for the first time, he set out exactly how he would tackle illegal migration if he was Prime Minister. First, let's look at the numbers. More than 28 ,000 people have crossed the English Channel in small boats so far this year. That's a new record.

2:03212 people arrived on Sunday alone in four boats, making the total 46 % higher than by the same date in 2024. And look, a lot of people are angry. It's been a summer of protests outside hotels housing migrants like this one. Save our kids! Save our kids! Save our kids! Now, Labour agree it's a problem. They say they're the ones, though, with a plan to smash the smuggling gangs with a new agreement to return people to France. But it's obviously an issue that reform are trying to capitalise on. And the polls show it's working. They've only got four MPs, but they're up to 30 % in the polls. So it's really important to take their plans seriously and to scrutinise them.

2:48Is this going to work? Well, to try and find out the answer to that, we've got our very own Deputy Political Editor, Sam Cates, with us. Good to see you, Sam. Nice to be here. And particularly good to see you on a day like today. Because look, this is the big reform idea on their number one issue. The issue that they think is going to win in the next general election, right? So it could be more important for the party and for the leader. What are they saying? So Nigel Farage gave a huge press conference outside Oxford today in order to set out their plans that they say are part of Operation Restoring Justice to deal with the small boats crisis and to, as they would characterize it, get back control of Britain's borders.

3:31We heard some policy specifics today, but that isn't the big point, the big political point that Nigel Farage is trying to achieve today. It's much more about grabbing the conversation, grabbing the microphone and challenging both the Conservatives and the Labour Party. That's the goal. But he did it by setting out a whole load of policy specifics. Yeah, it's interesting when you just say that, actually, about grabbing the microphone, because it feels to me like, look, the election's a few years away. They're not going to enact this tomorrow. But it's about shifting the debate and the conversation as well, right, onto their terrain.

4:04100%. Giving an hour-long press conference, which I don't think I've ever seen Keir Starmer do, and I certainly haven't seen Kemi Baden-Ock do. We're pro-big press conferences, by the way. Big, big fans of big press conferences. On a day which is just on the cusp of back to school, on an issue that's been really hard for all the main parties, is classic Farage. Like a magician with his prestige, if you look at the policy detail, you miss how he does his trick and grabs the agenda, as he has done so often in the past. So what he's saying is that in the next parliament, providing Reform UK are the government.

4:39Now, that's a big if, and it's quite interesting. He sort of has to be taken as read for all of what he's about to say. That's a big thing for a party with four MPs to say. If Reform UK are the government, then they will deport over the course of five years 600 ,000 people. They will have five deportation flights a day. They'll set up something called UK Deportation Command. They say it will cost 10 billion over five years. Interestingly, that figure is a net figure. net of what they say is the£7 billion a year illegal migration costs the country, costs the taxpayer already. If you're here illegally, you'll be given six months to basically, and this is Nigel Farage's term, self-deport.

5:20You'll be given£2 ,500 and a seat on a plane if you go for that option. If not, they say, Zia Youssef and Nigel Farage say, that you will be arrested and taken out of the country and never allowed to return. And the way that they will do this is to withdraw from a whole series of international conventions, not only the European Convention of Human Rights, but Nigel Farage also says that he will disapply, slightly different than that, disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention. So that gives you a sense of the picture in order to get those people back to their countries of origin that he, the UK, would negotiate a whole series of returns agreements, which he says can be done even with countries like the Taliban run Afghanistan.

6:07done. I guess my question is, is the argument basically over? Because it felt like a little while ago, we were talking about whether it was right to deport asylum seekers, whether they should be described as asylum seekers. But we are obviously seeing record numbers of people on the beaches, in small boats. And most of the mainstream parties now are saying that this is an issue that needs to be tackled. So is that argument basically done? There are so many traps when analysing a policy like this. So many areas where people will accuse you of distorting or putting the wrong emphasis. But one of the ways that you can reliably try and report on politics is work out what areas are matters, as you say, of consensus.

6:53And I think it is fair to say right now that the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and Reform UK would all agree that the small-bait situation is something approaching crisis. And all three of those parties would say that deterrence needs to be in the mix for the way that you basically scare people off from coming over. You make it clear that it's not going to be worth their while. If they come over, there will be consequences, and those consequences will be negative. So I think one of the things that Nigel Farage is doing is he is trying to own, and listeners will decide whether or not they think he's doing it or not, but he's trying to own a bit of the consensus that there is and then also own and highlight the gaps between his party and other parties.

7:40And this is where, like him or loathe him, there was quite a lot of nuanced, skilled politics in what we saw and in the way that he goes about it. And he doesn't have a record like the other parties write on this. So it is easier for him to make these big promises, you know. Of course he doesn't have a governing record and I am not here to be Nigel Farage's spokesman but he would say he does have a track record of highlighting the problems perhaps before the media and other political parties would raise them. He repeatedly talked about how in 2019-2020 he was raising the issue of small boats before they became as big as they were.

8:16Now quite easy low cost thing for him to do at the time. It was an easy low cost bet arguably that has paid off for moments like today. And what did you make of the language he used around it then? This is one of the two massive things that he was trying to achieve. My argument today is today is about language and it's about the law. On the language, three of the parties would agree that there's a crisis. But I don't think the Conservatives or the Labour Party would use the same type of language that Nigel Farage does. He talks about, and just as I say these words, I want you to think, does Keir Starmer say this?

8:53Does Kemi Baden-Ock say this? Britain is a country being invaded. You don't hear the other two saying that. He talks about fighting age males. People might think that's very loaded. Being paid by the taxpayer to perform leisure activities and wellness activities. You might get the Tories saying that. The promise from Reform UK is to send them back from the countries they come from. I think that kind of phrase can have resonance and in a program of what they would call mass deportation. So what I think is going on here is when it comes to language, although the argument is not that dissimilar between the parties about the ends, one of the things that Nigel Farage is doing today is being deliberately provocative and deliberately going further in anticipation and a hope that interviewers and people who don't like him will come for him over the language in the hope that there are people who will agree with him.

9:49And that's one of the things that he's trying to do. Yeah, I'm so interested that you say there about interviewers coming at him over the language, because I think this is a really key point. I really do. And actually, it's something that I feel, to be completely honest with you as an interviewer as well. It's really hard and you've got to get the tone right. And you see all the time people falling into the traps that they hope you will, because they want to portray us, right, as the MSM, The mainstream media, part of the blob, part of the establishment, the London metropolitan elite, right? So if we go over him, if we talk too much about the language, then you miss the policy.

10:24How we might talk about and report something today is so different from how we would have done in 2016 and 2013 and 2008. And what we would have said caused a row then arguably doesn't. And I think that's because we've changed and I think the public's changed and I think politicians have changed. Maybe it's also because people were getting frustrated at us for not getting it, right? The consensus has changed. Yes, but, you know, there probably were a decent number of people who thought this all the time. And it's not us changing the consensus. I come back to that island of safety when it comes to politics, which is there is a political consensus.

10:58And yeah, there are parties like the Greens who reject it. But there is a political consensus between the Tories, Labour and reform that we are in a certain place on this. And areas of agreement are arguably more important than areas of disagreement. and the language is a tool used by Nigel Farage to get his impression across at a point where there is actually a bit more there are more people on his side than you know in terms of ends than you might think. It's easier for them for reform to have an argument about the language than to have an argument about the policy and I think that is why it's quite important to get onto the policy right because my question is is this in any way realistic?

11:3710 billion pounds over five years to deport 600 ,000 people sounds like a challenging proposition. Some of those will be women, some of them will be children. that even as Nigel Varage said at the press conference will require special handling and care, I cannot say at this point. There are think tanks that suggest it's going to cost more. There are Reform UK figures who say, well, what about the£7 billion a year that illegal migration costs us? You've got to net that figure out. Look, if we're being honest... We don't know, right? And that's okay to say that. That's part of the, you know, levelling with people as well, right?

12:19But there's another bit of this, of the policy answer, and that's the legal bit. So what Nigel Farage has now said very explicitly is the post-Second World War consensus about how you deal with people crossing borders, how you deal with refugees, the kind of laws and international treaties that were drawn up to deal with people fleeing the Nazis. That's all now not fit for purpose. critics of for instance the un refugee convention which sounds like something that a country ought to sign up to but critics would say would point to the section which says that we have an obligation to settle anyone with a well-founded fear of persecution now critics say that that's a founding charter of today's people smuggling industry because it means that say you come from sudan or syria you've got 98 chance of launching an appeal and and it being accepted on on those grounds.

13:15So actually, if you get here, then 90 % you can stay. Is the argument that's used by people traffickers when they're trying to attract people. But it's bigger than that. Nigel Farage is basically saying, we're going to rip all of that up. First of all, he's doing it in the knowledge that Labour aren't going to do that. I mean, we don't know for certain. And there is a review amongst the Labour Party of two bits, amongst Article 8 and Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights. But I mean, that's not pulling out. So there's a dividing line there. But get this. And I don't know whether you remember this, Sophie.

13:51Just before the summer, Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, said she was almost certain to do all of this as well. The point of Nigel Farage today is to stand up with the world's media, with the UK media watching him and eat Kemi Baden-Ock's lunch. He's basically getting there first. He's stealing her homework. And then it looks like she's following him. She does it, right? Exactly. So Kemi Baden-Ock's response today was, oh, reforms plans are not different from ours. See how we would do it properly when we get to conference time. Well, first of all, they are different. That's actually not right. is factually wrong from the Tory leader because the last time she did an intervention on this, she said she was thinking about it but hadn't confirmed it.

14:37And secondly, she's saying, but could you just give us about five or six weeks before we tell you the exact detail? And I submit to you, Sophie, that there are going to be Tory MPs uncomfortable with the speed of progress on what they also think is a very serious issue. The one question I did want to ask you on policy is these returns agreements right? Because if there is a consensus among three of the parties that small boats are a big problem, a big political problem, that they need to reduce the number, that they need to, if possible, take back or get people to leave the country who have arrived illegally.

15:19How easy or not is that to do? There are certain returns agreements that the Labour government has signed that they say are a success. Nigel Farage points to the German return agreement with Afghanistan. It's worth saying that the people being sent back to Afghanistan from Germany, I believe, had broken the law in Germany. So there's quite a specific kind of set of conditions around that. I mean, this sounds, this is like stating the bleeding obvious in some ways, but you can't just put someone on a plane and send them back to Afghanistan. You have to have an agreement with the government, and I know it's the Taliban, Afghans, obviously, or whatever country it is, that they will then accept them off that plane.

16:00That was an issue that came up with Nigel Farage today. I'm not speaking for him, but I can just repeat what he said, which, you know, asked, and could that result in some people being killed? And Nigel Farage's answer to all this is, look, you've got to pick a side. I have got some concern for people's safety, but I've got a greater concern, he would say, for the women and children in the UK, who he thinks are at risk from people of fighting age coming over here. Again, his language, his framing, and that's his answer. I'm just trying to work out the practicality of it. I just can't see any evidence that we're going to be able to get hundreds of thousands of people returned to other countries.

16:43I've really been reflecting in our conversation about how, as you have been pointing out, how the whole tone of the debate has changed in the time that you and I have been in Westminster covering issues like this and just looking ahead to the months ahead. I don't think it's any exaggeration to say that this is going to be perhaps the political dividing line. Unless something else that came up at the press conference actually comes true and that there is a problem in the bond markets and then we end up at the IMF, that could be an even bigger story. Oh, thanks for that cheery end to the conversation, Sam.

17:14It's always good to have you here to really give me a moment of hope at the end of my holiday. Yeah, that's why so many people come to me for the good news in life. Sam, thank you very much. It's always great to have your analysis on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening. The Daily is back tomorrow.

17:37Hello, Ed Conway here. Here is what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how, together, they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.