Britain is being invaded. For decades, Tory and Labour governments have promised to get tough on illegal immigration. Yet year after year, tens of thousands of fighting-age males continue to arrive on our beaches. In the last eight years alone, over 200,000 people have entered illegally on small boats - more than the Allied forces that stormed Normandy on D-Day. The total number of illegal immigrants in the country now stands at well over a million.
Their flouting of our borders has been rewarded by a political class that puts them up in luxury hotels at the British taxpayer’s expense, providing them with free meals, free healthcare, free TV licences, and even free trips to safari parks, cinemas and more.
The Tories allowed 130,000 small boat migrants to arrive. Labour is simply continuing their betrayal. Tory and Labour politicians have consistently prioritised the rights of foreign citizens over our own. Now, even those who commit heinous crimes are routinely defended by so-called human rights lawyers, who succeed in preventing even illegal immigrants convicted of rape from being deported.
Rhiannon White had just finished her shift at the Park Inn Hotel and was on the phone to a friend as she waited on the train station platform. She never boarded that train, because Deng Majek - a Sudanese illegal immigrant who had arrived by small boat three months earlier - stabbed her 23 times with a screwdriver before she could. CCTV footage showed Majek dancing and laughing later that night in the car park of his hotel. Rhiannon died in hospital three days later. She was 27.
The patience of the British people is now exhausted. We will not accept that Britain’s borders should be opened, our people put at risk, our veterans evicted from their homes to house foreign lawbreakers. This is a national security emergency.
Tory and Labour governments have treated this emergency with contemptible weakness. Rather than defending the realm, they turned state agencies into a free taxi service, surrendering the English Channel to criminal cartels.
Reform UK will end this crisis for good.
We will launch Operation Fortress: the biggest military operation in the English Channel since the Second World War. Under a Reform government, Nigel Farage will order His Majesty’s Royal Navy to ensure that not a single unauthorised vessel makes it to the shores of the United Kingdom. Our plan is endorsed by senior former members of our Armed Forces. It is simple.
First, we will create an Integrated Surveillance Command, unifying military and intelligence surveillance to make ours the most surveilled maritime border in the world. Second, any vessel attempting to cross illegally will be intercepted by our Armed Forces, who will return everyone on board to France. Not one illegal immigrant will make it to Britain. Once the possibility of settling here is removed, the incentive structure breaks. Economic migrants will stop paying smugglers, and the boats will stop coming.
And if the French object? Let me be crystal clear: A Reform government will show unflinching resolve to ensure that people who set out from France to break into Britain are going back to France. That is our policy, not a future negotiating position with the French government. What France gets to decide is how that happens.
We would rather disembark people in port and hand them to the French authorities in a proper and dignified manner. But, if the Élysée Palace refuses, make no mistake: His Majesty’s Royal Marines will disembark them safely on the very shore they left that morning. Those are the only two options. There is no third option where a Reform government just shrugs its shoulders and brings them to Dover. That is the failed policy of Tory and Labour governments that has led us to the present disaster.
For the French to block Royal Marines on a humanitarian mission, forcing immigrants back out to sea and endangering their lives, would be a crime against humanity. No French president would seriously consider it, and I don’t believe the French public would stand for it if they did.
When the Australians faced a wave of illegal boat immigration, they deployed their military in response. Illegal crossings fell to zero within weeks. It ended the crisis. It also saved lives. Between 2007 and 2013, 1,200 immigrants had died making the journey. The Australian military operation reduced that to zero. Over 170 immigrants have already died trying to come to Britain via the Channel - this policy would have saved their lives too.
The Tory-Labour establishment will say it can’t be done. They must, or face the reality of their own failure. But the former Navy commanders who engineered this plan leave no room for doubt: it can be done, and it must be done.
This is how we will stop the boats for good.
Reform UK will end the invasion of Britain.
Reform UK will put the British people first.
(This is a slightly edited version of an article published in the Daily Telegraph on 4th August.)
Their flouting of our borders has been rewarded by a political class that puts them up in luxury hotels at the British taxpayer’s expense, providing them with free meals, free healthcare, free TV licences, and even free trips to safari parks, cinemas and more.
The Tories allowed 130,000 small boat migrants to arrive. Labour is simply continuing their betrayal. Tory and Labour politicians have consistently prioritised the rights of foreign citizens over our own. Now, even those who commit heinous crimes are routinely defended by so-called human rights lawyers, who succeed in preventing even illegal immigrants convicted of rape from being deported.
Rhiannon White had just finished her shift at the Park Inn Hotel and was on the phone to a friend as she waited on the train station platform. She never boarded that train, because Deng Majek - a Sudanese illegal immigrant who had arrived by small boat three months earlier - stabbed her 23 times with a screwdriver before she could. CCTV footage showed Majek dancing and laughing later that night in the car park of his hotel. Rhiannon died in hospital three days later. She was 27.
The patience of the British people is now exhausted. We will not accept that Britain’s borders should be opened, our people put at risk, our veterans evicted from their homes to house foreign lawbreakers. This is a national security emergency.
Tory and Labour governments have treated this emergency with contemptible weakness. Rather than defending the realm, they turned state agencies into a free taxi service, surrendering the English Channel to criminal cartels.
Reform UK will end this crisis for good.
We will launch Operation Fortress: the biggest military operation in the English Channel since the Second World War. Under a Reform government, Nigel Farage will order His Majesty’s Royal Navy to ensure that not a single unauthorised vessel makes it to the shores of the United Kingdom. Our plan is endorsed by senior former members of our Armed Forces. It is simple.
First, we will create an Integrated Surveillance Command, unifying military and intelligence surveillance to make ours the most surveilled maritime border in the world. Second, any vessel attempting to cross illegally will be intercepted by our Armed Forces, who will return everyone on board to France. Not one illegal immigrant will make it to Britain. Once the possibility of settling here is removed, the incentive structure breaks. Economic migrants will stop paying smugglers, and the boats will stop coming.
And if the French object? Let me be crystal clear: A Reform government will show unflinching resolve to ensure that people who set out from France to break into Britain are going back to France. That is our policy, not a future negotiating position with the French government. What France gets to decide is how that happens.
We would rather disembark people in port and hand them to the French authorities in a proper and dignified manner. But, if the Élysée Palace refuses, make no mistake: His Majesty’s Royal Marines will disembark them safely on the very shore they left that morning. Those are the only two options. There is no third option where a Reform government just shrugs its shoulders and brings them to Dover. That is the failed policy of Tory and Labour governments that has led us to the present disaster.
For the French to block Royal Marines on a humanitarian mission, forcing immigrants back out to sea and endangering their lives, would be a crime against humanity. No French president would seriously consider it, and I don’t believe the French public would stand for it if they did.
When the Australians faced a wave of illegal boat immigration, they deployed their military in response. Illegal crossings fell to zero within weeks. It ended the crisis. It also saved lives. Between 2007 and 2013, 1,200 immigrants had died making the journey. The Australian military operation reduced that to zero. Over 170 immigrants have already died trying to come to Britain via the Channel - this policy would have saved their lives too.
The Tory-Labour establishment will say it can’t be done. They must, or face the reality of their own failure. But the former Navy commanders who engineered this plan leave no room for doubt: it can be done, and it must be done.
This is how we will stop the boats for good.
Reform UK will end the invasion of Britain.
Reform UK will put the British people first.
(This is a slightly edited version of an article published in the Daily Telegraph on 4th August.)
