\n<\/p>\n
Halfway into his press conference on Tuesday \u2013 during which he announced his party would deport asylum seekers en masse if it entered government \u2013 Nigel Farage sounded a note of triumphalism.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the most interesting things about this press conference \u2026 is the questions being asked are about the practicalities of individual pieces of implementation,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat I notice is there is very little pushback from the media against the idea that we really are in very, very big trouble in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the heart of the Reform leader\u2019s speech was a political gamble. In the past, Farage has been sparing in his use of hardline rhetoric around migration, cautious not to get too close to the arguments of the far right.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, however, he cut loose, describing irregular migration as an \u201cinvasion\u201d and a \u201cscourge\u201d, referring to men who cross the Channel repeatedly as being of \u201cfighting age\u201d, and saying: \u201cWe are not far away from major civil disorder.\u201d<\/p>\n
With his party 10 points ahead in the polls, Farage has been facing a dilemma over whether to lean into his image as a firebrand rightwing populist or to try to appear more statesmanlike in an attempt to position himself for Downing Street.<\/p>\n
Gawain Towler, his former head of communications, said: \u201cFarage should not be seen as a street-fighting man. He plans to govern for the whole country and needs to be seen in that light.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some in Reform described Tuesday\u2019s speech in a similar light, saying it constituted the kind of thought-through policy proposal that voters would seek in a party of government.<\/p>\n
Others, however, argue Farage\u2019s own answers to detailed policy questions showed he was more interested in the politics of the plan than whether it could work.<\/p>\n
Asked by the Guardian for example why he had costed his plan at \u00a310bn, when the Centre for Migration Control had estimated a near-identical plan would cost \u00a347.5bn, Farage said dismissively: \u201cZia [Yusuf, his Reform colleague] is really good at maths.\u201d<\/p>\n
The gamble for the Reform leader, say experts, lies less in whether the public care about such policy details and more about whether they agree with Farage\u2019s argument that the validity of a person\u2019s asylum claim matters less than how they entered the country.<\/p>\n
Joe Twyman, the co-founder of the polling company Deltapoll, said: \u201cAbout one in six people endorse very strong views on legal or settled migrants, and that number hasn\u2019t really changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat Farage is doing is tapping into a longstanding but still relatively small minority. The reason he\u2019s doing this is for the vibes \u2013 he wants people to hear a hardline message on migration and thinks most people won\u2019t care about the detail.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunder Katwala, the director of the thinktank British Future, said: \u201cBetween a fifth and a quarter have no sympathy for people crossing the Channel \u2013 thats Farage\u2019s core vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother fifth are \u2018team compassion\u2019, but most are in between: they want control but also care whether an asylum seeker\u2019s claim is justified.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Farage was quickly proved correct, however, in one respect. While journalists were willing to ask tough questions about the fundamental tenets of Reform\u2019s plan, Downing Street seemed less willing to.<\/p>\n Asked by reporters whether Keir Starmer had moral misgivings about Farage\u2019s speech or the language he used, a spokesperson replied: \u201cWe totally recognise the concerns that the British people have with the surge in illegal migration \u2026 but we are focused on taking forward the practical actions and solutions that will deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Conservatives were even more reluctant to criticise the Reform leader. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, accused Farage of \u201creheating and recycling plans that the Conservatives have already announced\u201d.<\/p>\n Labour and the Tories have found it difficult to respond to public concern about the levels of legal and illegal migration.<\/p>\n But some say the tendency of the government in particular to accept the premise of Reform\u2019s arguments and argue about implementation carries its own risks.<\/p>\n \u201cFarage is OK \u2013 in a three-way split he might be able to get a minority government on 26%-27%,\u201d said Katwala. \u201cStarmer, however, can only hold his coalition of voters together if he talks about control and compassion.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Labour is completely on the fence, it risks not keeping either side happy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Halfway into his press conference on Tuesday \u2013 during which he announced his party would deport asylum seekers en masse if it entered government \u2013 Nigel Farage sounded a note of triumphalism. \u201cOne of the most interesting things about this press conference \u2026 is the questions being asked are about the practicalities of individual pieces<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[4563,4280,3132,7833,1472,3131,1436,10938],"class_list":{"0":"post-17989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-aims","9":"tag-deportation","10":"tag-farage","11":"tag-hardline","12":"tag-mass","13":"tag-nigel","14":"tag-plan","15":"tag-vibes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}