This is an edited extract of a speech delivered by Nigel Farage on 12th October.
It was on 9th May 2020 when I went out from Dover in a fishing boat to look at what was beginning to become a regular pattern in the English Channel. There had been a couple of small boats in 2018, a few in 2019, but by early 2020, it seemed there was a steadier stream arriving.
It was on that day when, on YouTube, I said that this was going to be the beginning of an invasion; that you might as well put a sign on the White Cliffs of Dover saying, “Everybody welcome.”
I remember the howls of indignation with which my comments were met: that somehow I’d lost touch with reality; that I was desperately seeking a new political life now that Brexit was done. And, of course, much abuse.
Now that over 200,000 illegal immigrants have come, I can stand here and say that I was right. I was well-ahead of the rest of the pack. It was obvious that if you don’t deport people who come illegally, they will keep on coming.
I do believe one of the biggest reasons for voting Brexit was seeing the madness of what was happening in Europe and saying: “We don’t want that to happen here. We need to get back control of our borders. We need to decide who comes legally, and we need to make it clear that nobody can come illegally and be allowed to stay.”
Sadly, that hope has been completely betrayed by both Conservative and now a Labour government.
What Zia Yusuf and I are saying today is that we just want this to be a normal country. That’s all. Nothing radical or crazy.
We want to get back to being a normal country: a country that puts national security at the top of the agenda; a country that does everything it can to protect its own citizens; and a country that detains and deports people who come illegally, as virtually every other country in the world does, and indeed as we used to do.
We will end the asylum system for five years. Why are we going to do that? Because we’re in the most terrible mess as a country. We literally have no idea who is here, and we frankly can’t afford to take the risk.
It’s not as if we’ve been ungenerous over the course of the last decade. Indeed, since the Brexit vote, half a million people have been given asylum here. That is higher than virtually any other country in the world. But we have to end this asylum scam, and we have to end this racket.
I’m going to repeat the point that we will deport foreign criminals and those who are here illegally. And it’s about time we started standing up for ourselves. It’s about time we started to put our own national priorities first.
Pakistan needs to take back that man now living freely in the north-west of England who was at the heart of one of the most appalling rape gangs.
If that means, in the case of Pakistan, that we have to bring in visa bans, we’ll do so. If it means threatening Pakistani nationals’ assets in London, we will do so. If it means introducing flight bans, we will do so. And, in extremis, we’d even look at tariffs.
People will accept their bad guys back. We’ll accept our bad guys back too. Although we know the numbers are somewhat bigger in one direction than they are in the other.
We will not allow anybody who poses a potential threat to our national security to stay in our country.
We made much of this clear last year with Operation Restoring Justice. We’ve thought it through. We’ve costed it.
We added to that Operation Fortress: the plan to return boats to France. And frankly, after the riots we’ve seen in France recently, a Le Pen victory looks far more certain than it has at any point in time.
We’ll remove the barriers to the British government being able to do this. Yes, we’ve got to leave the ECHR. We’ve got to repeal the Human Rights Act. And we’ve got to pass a mass deportations bill. And we’ve got to, for the moment at least, before it can be modernised, disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention.
The British public are demanding a government that does the right thing. And I put it to you that only Reform has the courage to be that.
Watch the full press conference here.
It was on 9th May 2020 when I went out from Dover in a fishing boat to look at what was beginning to become a regular pattern in the English Channel. There had been a couple of small boats in 2018, a few in 2019, but by early 2020, it seemed there was a steadier stream arriving.
It was on that day when, on YouTube, I said that this was going to be the beginning of an invasion; that you might as well put a sign on the White Cliffs of Dover saying, “Everybody welcome.”
I remember the howls of indignation with which my comments were met: that somehow I’d lost touch with reality; that I was desperately seeking a new political life now that Brexit was done. And, of course, much abuse.
Now that over 200,000 illegal immigrants have come, I can stand here and say that I was right. I was well-ahead of the rest of the pack. It was obvious that if you don’t deport people who come illegally, they will keep on coming.
I do believe one of the biggest reasons for voting Brexit was seeing the madness of what was happening in Europe and saying: “We don’t want that to happen here. We need to get back control of our borders. We need to decide who comes legally, and we need to make it clear that nobody can come illegally and be allowed to stay.”
Sadly, that hope has been completely betrayed by both Conservative and now a Labour government.
What Zia Yusuf and I are saying today is that we just want this to be a normal country. That’s all. Nothing radical or crazy.
We want to get back to being a normal country: a country that puts national security at the top of the agenda; a country that does everything it can to protect its own citizens; and a country that detains and deports people who come illegally, as virtually every other country in the world does, and indeed as we used to do.
We will end the asylum system for five years. Why are we going to do that? Because we’re in the most terrible mess as a country. We literally have no idea who is here, and we frankly can’t afford to take the risk.
It’s not as if we’ve been ungenerous over the course of the last decade. Indeed, since the Brexit vote, half a million people have been given asylum here. That is higher than virtually any other country in the world. But we have to end this asylum scam, and we have to end this racket.
I’m going to repeat the point that we will deport foreign criminals and those who are here illegally. And it’s about time we started standing up for ourselves. It’s about time we started to put our own national priorities first.
Pakistan needs to take back that man now living freely in the north-west of England who was at the heart of one of the most appalling rape gangs.
If that means, in the case of Pakistan, that we have to bring in visa bans, we’ll do so. If it means threatening Pakistani nationals’ assets in London, we will do so. If it means introducing flight bans, we will do so. And, in extremis, we’d even look at tariffs.
People will accept their bad guys back. We’ll accept our bad guys back too. Although we know the numbers are somewhat bigger in one direction than they are in the other.
We will not allow anybody who poses a potential threat to our national security to stay in our country.
We made much of this clear last year with Operation Restoring Justice. We’ve thought it through. We’ve costed it.
We added to that Operation Fortress: the plan to return boats to France. And frankly, after the riots we’ve seen in France recently, a Le Pen victory looks far more certain than it has at any point in time.
We’ll remove the barriers to the British government being able to do this. Yes, we’ve got to leave the ECHR. We’ve got to repeal the Human Rights Act. And we’ve got to pass a mass deportations bill. And we’ve got to, for the moment at least, before it can be modernised, disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention.
The British public are demanding a government that does the right thing. And I put it to you that only Reform has the courage to be that.
Watch the full press conference here.
