Farage aims for hardline vibes with his mass deportation plan

Halfway into his press conference on Tuesday – during which he announced his party would deport asylum seekers en masse if it entered government – Nigel Farage sounded a note of triumphalism.“One of the most interesting things about this press conference … is the questions being asked are about the practicalities of individual pieces of implementation,” he said. “What 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.”At the heart of the Reform leader’s 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

Farage attacked for ‘ugly’ rhetoric of plan for mass deportation of asylum seekers

Nigel Farage has been accused of “ugly” and “destructive” rhetoric after announcing plans to deport hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and pledging to pay despotic regimes such as the Taliban to take them back.Unveiling Reform UK’s “Operation Restoring Justice” at a combative press conference in Oxford, Farage said he would rip up the UK’s postwar human rights commitments, contained in a range of international conventions, to deport “absolutely anyone” – including women and children – arriving by small boat.Calling asylum seekers a threat to national security and to British women, he claimed his plans would stop Channel crossings “within days” and “save tens and possibly hundreds of billions of pounds”.Downing Street accused Farage of not being serious about his plans, but in a sign of how Reform has set the tone for public debate, the prime minister’s spokesperson refused to criticise his references to irregular migration as an “invasion” and a “scourge” or his prediction that Britain is “not far away from major civil disorder”.Pushed on whether it would be a good idea to sign a returns deal with Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, as Farage proposed, the spokesperson said the government was “not going to take anything off the table”

The moral and economic costs of Farage’s plan to deport up to 600,000 asylum seekers

Nigel Farage has set out a plan that he claims would lead to the mass deportation of up to 600,000 asylum seekers if Reform were to be elected to power. The plan involves ripping up human rights law, building costly detention infrastructure and potentially paying corrupt and totalitarian regimes billions to accept people put on deportation flights.Here are the key planks of the policies – and what the moral and economic costs would be.The UK would be an outlier among European democracies, in the company of only Russia and Belarus, if it were to leave the European court of human rights (ECHR).Opting out of treaties such as the 1951 UN refugee convention, the UN convention against torture and the Council of Europe anti-trafficking convention would also be likely to do serious harm to the UK’s international reputation

Nigel Farage accused of ‘ripping up’ human rights laws after unveiling plans for mass deportations - as it happened

The Liberal Democrats have condemned Reform’s mass deportation plans for “ripping up” human rights and involving potential payments to autocratic regimes.The party’s deputy leader Daisy Cooper said:(Nigel) Farage’s plan crumbles under the most basic scrutiny. The idea that Reform UK is going to magic up some new places to detain people and deport them to, but don’t have a clue where those places would be, is taking the public for fools.Of course Nigel Farage wants to follow his idol Vladimir Putin in ripping up the human rights convention. Winston Churchill would be turning in his grave

Peers who do not participate enough in House of Lords face sack

Labour plans to remove peers who do not contribute enough to the House of Lords and to press ahead with plans for a retirement age of 80 from the upper house.Writing for the Telegraph, the leader of the House of Lords, Angela Smith, said a select committee would consider the next stage of Lords reform after the abolition of hereditary peers.Lady Smith said that removing the last hereditary peers was “by no means the limit of the government’s Lords reform ambitions” but said the new committee would consider carefully how the next phase would work.The final stages of the bill, which will abolish the seats for the 86 remaining hereditary peers, will go through parliament this year.“The introduction of a mandatory retirement age for peers and a participation requirement are both clear among our stage-two manifesto commitments,” Smith said in her article, but said there should be a “collaborative way forward”

UK elections chief says children need lessons from 11 to be ready to vote at 16

Schools will need to give democracy lessons to children from the age of 11 and ask teachers to leave their politics at the classroom door to help prepare for votes at 16, the head of the UK elections watchdog has said.Vijay Rangarajan, the chief executive of the Electoral Commission, said democratic education would be rolled out at first to those aged over 14 in preparation for votes at 16 at the next election.However, he said this would ultimately need to start at age 11 in order for pupils to be in the best position to take advantage of being able to vote at 16 and 17.The Electoral Commission is preparing material to give to schools to help with democratic education, amid calls from some politicians, such as David Blunkett, for better preparation.In an interview with the Guardian, Rangarajan said huge work was going into the citizenship material to make it “impartial”, and said schools and teachers have a role in making sure they do not attempt to sway students in how to vote