Imagine waking up and finding that the protections you took for granted — against arbitrary detention, indefinite detention without review, or being returned to torture — no longer apply to you.
That is what Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is proposing in its immigration blueprint, Operation Restoring Justice.
The plan to detain and deport hundreds of thousands, repeal the Human Rights Act, and withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is not just a policy on migration: it is a program to re-architect who in Britain counts as a rights-holder, and how the state exercises coercive power.
Strip it down, and this is not an immigration policy – it’s a rights-stripping project.
In that sense, Reform stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the Conservative Party that spent 14 years chipping away at asylum rights, judicial review, and protest freedoms.
Farage merely puts the mask aside.
Why, then, do so many UK citizens dream that Reform is an “alternative” to Badenoch’s Conservatives when they are singing from the same unholy hymn sheet?
A nation without rights
At the core of Reform’s plan is withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)(1).
In its place, Farage promises a “British Bill of Rights,” restricted to UK citizens and those with permanent status.
That means asylum seekers, migrants, even people in legal limbo would be stripped of basic guarantees — freedom from torture, arbitrary detention, and unlawful deportation.
Rights that apply only to some are not rights at all.
They are privileges, contingent on government approval.
Once the principle is accepted — that rights can be denied to “them” — it becomes easier to deny them to “us.”
Ask yourself: what stops a future government from extending that logic to protestors, benefit claimants, striking workers or political opponents?
Northern Ireland: manufacturing a new enemy
The ECHR isn’t an optional extra for Northern Ireland – it is baked into the Good Friday Agreement, which is the treaty that underpins the peace settlement. Withdrawal would mean that the UK was undermining the accord(2).
That risks reigniting tensions and handing extremists a gift: proof that Westminster cannot be trusted to protect rights in the North.
If that happens, Reform will have manufactured a new bogeyman for the UK to hate — “republican terrorism” — while ignoring the fact that it was London’s breach of promises that lit the fuse.
We cannot claim to be on the “right side” of history if we are the side that causes conflict.
Brussels as the eternal scapegoat
Leaving the ECHR also breaches the Brexit trade deal.
The UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement explicitly assumes continued adherence.
Breaking it could mean tariffs, suspended cooperation, and renewed economic pain(3).
Once again, the EU becomes the scapegoat.
Reform’s leaders have long hated European institutions, but here’s the truth: this would not be Brussels punishing the UK. It would be the UK creating its own crisis, then unfairly blaming the neighbour.
The price tag: austerity in disguise
Reform says its five-year plan will cost £10 billion. Independent estimates suggest detention centres alone could run beyond £12 billion(4) — before factoring in security, courts, or charter flights.
For context, 111,084 people claimed asylum in the UK in the year ending June 2025(5). That means Reform’s promise to deport ‘100,000 a year’ is not just arbitrary — it’s essentially saying everyone, without exception.
For comparison, £12 billion is twice the budget set aside to repair England’s collapsing schools(6) – and the money for detention centres would certainly be taken from other public services.
This isn’t fiscal prudence; it’s austerity with jackboots on.
Through a Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) lens, the UK could technically “afford” it, since it issues its own currency.
But affordability is not the point. The real constraint is resources; we are unlikely to be able to spend the money on both schools and detention centres because the limit on available resources would push the price up – and then we would be in an inflation spiral.
So every pound spent building prison camps for migrants means a pound not spent fixing hospitals or housing.
Keynesians would call that a dangerous misallocation of demand.
Even neoliberals, if they were consistent, should admit this is poor value-for-money.
So we are led to conclude that the real function is to mobilise anger, not manage resources.
Paying the Taliban?
Farage’s plan includes paying “origin countries” £2 billion to take back failed asylum seekers.
Some of those countries are run by groups like the Taliban.
So the same man who rails against “extremism” proposes funnelling billions into the coffers of extremists.
Does that sound like national security, protection money – or simply funding terrorism?
Historical parallels
We have been here before.
In the 1960s, Enoch Powell demanded mass repatriations.
At the time, even his Conservative colleagues dismissed it as a “political impossibility.” Farage once admitted the same(7).
Now, thanks to Brexit and a plan to hollow out our rights regime, what was once impossible is on the ballot.
Internationally, the US provides another lesson: Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban” and detention camps at his country’s border didn’t solve immigration pressures(8). They fuelled division, cost billions, and normalised cruelty.
Reform’s proposals would do the same here — but with the added cost of tearing up peace in Northern Ireland and trade with Europe.
The strategic stakes
The strategic implication is clear: Reform wants to redraw the British state itself – the social contract, from universal rights to conditional privileges; from due process to arbitrary detention; from diplomacy to antagonism.
Here’s the irony: far from “taking back control,” this would hand control to others.
Control would go to the EU, which could retaliate economically.
It would go to extremists in Kabul, who would take our money.
It would go to paramilitaries in Belfast, who would exploit the breach of trust.
Reform would weaken the very sovereignty it claims to defend.
What Would Real Solutions Look Like?
If the goal is an immigration system that works, alternatives do exist:
- Investment in asylum processing would cut the backlog and reduce costs.
- Safe routes for asylum-seekers would undercut traffickers.
- International cooperation — not antagonism — would share responsibility.
The problem for Reform UK, which survives by stirring up strong emotions, is that these policies are pragmatic and boring.
But they work: Denmark and Canada have models worth studying.
Even the UK, in the 2000s, ran faster, cheaper asylum systems before the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats gutted them with austerity.
Nationalisation could also play a role: bringing detention and housing back into public hands would end profiteering by firms like Serco, which inflate costs while cutting corners.
The case here is simple: when the state is paying anyway, why let corporations skim billions in contracts?
The real question
The BBC is wrong – and its coverage is misleading. The question here is not whether Reform’s plan is “achievable.”
Authoritarianism is always achievable, if you spend enough money and destroy enough laws.
The question is: If Reform UK’s plan were to go ahead, what would it cost, and to whom?
The answer is: it would cost our rights, our peace, our economy, and our democracy.
The winners would be a handful of private contractors, political opportunists, and the Farage cult of personality.
Reform dresses this up as “restoring justice.” But justice for whom?
Certainly not for the taxpayer, or for the communities asked to host detention camps, or for the ordinary UK citizen whose rights will be worth less tomorrow than they are today.
That is the truth Reform hopes we don’t notice. Which side are you on?
Footnotes
(1) Reform UK — Operation Restoring Justice (policy document / PDF). The full Reform UK PDF of the immigration plan released 26 Aug 2025.
PDF: https://assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/253/attachments/original/1756202533/REFORM_Immigration_Enforcement.pdf?1756202533=
(Direct source for the party plan and headline commitments.)
(2) The Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement (full text). Official UK/Northern Ireland government publication of the 1998 agreement which links human-rights protections into the peace settlement.
GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-belfast-agreement
(Yale Avalon Project reproduction also available: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/good_friday.asp)
(3) EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), text and summary (signed 30 Dec 2020). The TCA and EU communications note the agreement’s underpinning provisions relating to fundamental rights and cooperation. (Use this when noting possible treaty/diplomatic consequences.)
EU Commission background on TCA: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/relations-united-kingdom/eu-uk-trade-and-cooperation-agreement_en
GOV.UK copy of the TCA PDF: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/608ae0c0d3bf7f0136332887/TS_8.2021_UK_EU_EAEC_Trade_and_Cooperation_Agreement.pdf
(4) BBC / reporting and independent analysis of Reform’s headline costs vs. realistic construction costs.
Reform coverage and feasibility analysis: BBC coverage of Reform plan (see Jennifer McKiernan & Joshua Nevett, 26 Aug 2025) — (BBC site is subject to robots.txt for automated fetching; copy available from major wire services).
(5) Home Office — Immigration statistics: asylum claims and irregular arrivals (year ending June 2025). Official data for the 111,084 asylum claims and irregular arrival totals used in the article.
Home Office / GOV.UK (Immigration system statistics, year ending June 2025): https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-june-2025/how-many-people-claim-asylum-in-the-uk
(6) NAO / Ministry of Justice prison build cost estimates and construction inflation (context for per-bed build-costs and the claim that secure prison-style places cost in the high hundreds of thousands each). National Audit Office press release on prison expansion, and HMPPS/prison unit-cost data:
NAO press release on prison expansion overspend: https://www.nao.org.uk/press-releases/prison-expansion-plan-was-unrealistic-and-not-prioritised-nao/
GOV.UK prison unit cost data (prison performance and cost per prison place): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prison-performance-data-2023-to-2024
(7) On Farage previously calling mass deportations a “political impossibility” and his later change of line — reporting and clips. Multiple outlets recorded Reform officials and media noting the earlier line and the “flip.” See The Guardian live reporting and contemporaneous coverage:
The Guardian live coverage & summary (26 Aug 2025): https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/aug/26/nigel-farage-mass-deportations-reform-migration-small-boats-uk-politics-live
(8) U.S. comparative evidence on the costs/effects of mass deportation and detention (CBO & GAO analyses; DHS/ICE budgets). For the claim that mass detention and deportation in the US has been hugely costly and contested, cite CBO and DHS/ICE budget material:
Congressional Budget Office — Effects of the Immigration Surge on the Federal Budget and the Economy (example CBO analyses): https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60569
DHS/ICE budget documents and detention operating-cost context: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/U.S.%20IMMIGRATION%20AND%20CUSTOMS%20ENFORCEMENT_Remediated.pdf
If Reform UK succeeds, we ALL stand to lose in Farage’s war on rights
Imagine waking up and finding that the protections you took for granted — against arbitrary detention, indefinite detention without review, or being returned to torture — no longer apply to you.
That is what Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is proposing in its immigration blueprint, Operation Restoring Justice.
The plan to detain and deport hundreds of thousands, repeal the Human Rights Act, and withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is not just a policy on migration: it is a program to re-architect who in Britain counts as a rights-holder, and how the state exercises coercive power.
Strip it down, and this is not an immigration policy – it’s a rights-stripping project.
In that sense, Reform stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the Conservative Party that spent 14 years chipping away at asylum rights, judicial review, and protest freedoms.
Farage merely puts the mask aside.
Why, then, do so many UK citizens dream that Reform is an “alternative” to Badenoch’s Conservatives when they are singing from the same unholy hymn sheet?
A nation without rights
At the core of Reform’s plan is withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)(1).
In its place, Farage promises a “British Bill of Rights,” restricted to UK citizens and those with permanent status.
That means asylum seekers, migrants, even people in legal limbo would be stripped of basic guarantees — freedom from torture, arbitrary detention, and unlawful deportation.
Rights that apply only to some are not rights at all.
They are privileges, contingent on government approval.
Once the principle is accepted — that rights can be denied to “them” — it becomes easier to deny them to “us.”
Ask yourself: what stops a future government from extending that logic to protestors, benefit claimants, striking workers or political opponents?
Northern Ireland: manufacturing a new enemy
The ECHR isn’t an optional extra for Northern Ireland – it is baked into the Good Friday Agreement, which is the treaty that underpins the peace settlement. Withdrawal would mean that the UK was undermining the accord(2).
That risks reigniting tensions and handing extremists a gift: proof that Westminster cannot be trusted to protect rights in the North.
If that happens, Reform will have manufactured a new bogeyman for the UK to hate — “republican terrorism” — while ignoring the fact that it was London’s breach of promises that lit the fuse.
We cannot claim to be on the “right side” of history if we are the side that causes conflict.
Brussels as the eternal scapegoat
Leaving the ECHR also breaches the Brexit trade deal.
The UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement explicitly assumes continued adherence.
Breaking it could mean tariffs, suspended cooperation, and renewed economic pain(3).
Once again, the EU becomes the scapegoat.
Reform’s leaders have long hated European institutions, but here’s the truth: this would not be Brussels punishing the UK. It would be the UK creating its own crisis, then unfairly blaming the neighbour.
The price tag: austerity in disguise
Reform says its five-year plan will cost £10 billion. Independent estimates suggest detention centres alone could run beyond £12 billion(4) — before factoring in security, courts, or charter flights.
For context, 111,084 people claimed asylum in the UK in the year ending June 2025(5). That means Reform’s promise to deport ‘100,000 a year’ is not just arbitrary — it’s essentially saying everyone, without exception.
For comparison, £12 billion is twice the budget set aside to repair England’s collapsing schools(6) – and the money for detention centres would certainly be taken from other public services.
This isn’t fiscal prudence; it’s austerity with jackboots on.
Through a Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) lens, the UK could technically “afford” it, since it issues its own currency.
But affordability is not the point. The real constraint is resources; we are unlikely to be able to spend the money on both schools and detention centres because the limit on available resources would push the price up – and then we would be in an inflation spiral.
So every pound spent building prison camps for migrants means a pound not spent fixing hospitals or housing.
Keynesians would call that a dangerous misallocation of demand.
Even neoliberals, if they were consistent, should admit this is poor value-for-money.
So we are led to conclude that the real function is to mobilise anger, not manage resources.
Paying the Taliban?
Farage’s plan includes paying “origin countries” £2 billion to take back failed asylum seekers.
Some of those countries are run by groups like the Taliban.
So the same man who rails against “extremism” proposes funnelling billions into the coffers of extremists.
Does that sound like national security, protection money – or simply funding terrorism?
Historical parallels
We have been here before.
In the 1960s, Enoch Powell demanded mass repatriations.
At the time, even his Conservative colleagues dismissed it as a “political impossibility.” Farage once admitted the same(7).
Now, thanks to Brexit and a plan to hollow out our rights regime, what was once impossible is on the ballot.
Internationally, the US provides another lesson: Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban” and detention camps at his country’s border didn’t solve immigration pressures(8). They fuelled division, cost billions, and normalised cruelty.
Reform’s proposals would do the same here — but with the added cost of tearing up peace in Northern Ireland and trade with Europe.
The strategic stakes
The strategic implication is clear: Reform wants to redraw the British state itself – the social contract, from universal rights to conditional privileges; from due process to arbitrary detention; from diplomacy to antagonism.
Here’s the irony: far from “taking back control,” this would hand control to others.
Control would go to the EU, which could retaliate economically.
It would go to extremists in Kabul, who would take our money.
It would go to paramilitaries in Belfast, who would exploit the breach of trust.
Reform would weaken the very sovereignty it claims to defend.
What Would Real Solutions Look Like?
If the goal is an immigration system that works, alternatives do exist:
The problem for Reform UK, which survives by stirring up strong emotions, is that these policies are pragmatic and boring.
But they work: Denmark and Canada have models worth studying.
Even the UK, in the 2000s, ran faster, cheaper asylum systems before the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats gutted them with austerity.
Nationalisation could also play a role: bringing detention and housing back into public hands would end profiteering by firms like Serco, which inflate costs while cutting corners.
The case here is simple: when the state is paying anyway, why let corporations skim billions in contracts?
The real question
The BBC is wrong – and its coverage is misleading. The question here is not whether Reform’s plan is “achievable.”
Authoritarianism is always achievable, if you spend enough money and destroy enough laws.
The question is: If Reform UK’s plan were to go ahead, what would it cost, and to whom?
The answer is: it would cost our rights, our peace, our economy, and our democracy.
The winners would be a handful of private contractors, political opportunists, and the Farage cult of personality.
Reform dresses this up as “restoring justice.” But justice for whom?
Certainly not for the taxpayer, or for the communities asked to host detention camps, or for the ordinary UK citizen whose rights will be worth less tomorrow than they are today.
That is the truth Reform hopes we don’t notice. Which side are you on?
Footnotes
(1) Reform UK — Operation Restoring Justice (policy document / PDF). The full Reform UK PDF of the immigration plan released 26 Aug 2025.
PDF: https://assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/253/attachments/original/1756202533/REFORM_Immigration_Enforcement.pdf?1756202533=
(Direct source for the party plan and headline commitments.)
(2) The Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement (full text). Official UK/Northern Ireland government publication of the 1998 agreement which links human-rights protections into the peace settlement.
GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-belfast-agreement
(Yale Avalon Project reproduction also available: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/good_friday.asp)
(3) EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), text and summary (signed 30 Dec 2020). The TCA and EU communications note the agreement’s underpinning provisions relating to fundamental rights and cooperation. (Use this when noting possible treaty/diplomatic consequences.)
EU Commission background on TCA: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/relations-united-kingdom/eu-uk-trade-and-cooperation-agreement_en
GOV.UK copy of the TCA PDF: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/608ae0c0d3bf7f0136332887/TS_8.2021_UK_EU_EAEC_Trade_and_Cooperation_Agreement.pdf
(4) BBC / reporting and independent analysis of Reform’s headline costs vs. realistic construction costs.
Reform coverage and feasibility analysis: BBC coverage of Reform plan (see Jennifer McKiernan & Joshua Nevett, 26 Aug 2025) — (BBC site is subject to robots.txt for automated fetching; copy available from major wire services).
(5) Home Office — Immigration statistics: asylum claims and irregular arrivals (year ending June 2025). Official data for the 111,084 asylum claims and irregular arrival totals used in the article.
Home Office / GOV.UK (Immigration system statistics, year ending June 2025): https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-june-2025/how-many-people-claim-asylum-in-the-uk
(6) NAO / Ministry of Justice prison build cost estimates and construction inflation (context for per-bed build-costs and the claim that secure prison-style places cost in the high hundreds of thousands each). National Audit Office press release on prison expansion, and HMPPS/prison unit-cost data:
NAO press release on prison expansion overspend: https://www.nao.org.uk/press-releases/prison-expansion-plan-was-unrealistic-and-not-prioritised-nao/
GOV.UK prison unit cost data (prison performance and cost per prison place): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prison-performance-data-2023-to-2024
(7) On Farage previously calling mass deportations a “political impossibility” and his later change of line — reporting and clips. Multiple outlets recorded Reform officials and media noting the earlier line and the “flip.” See The Guardian live reporting and contemporaneous coverage:
The Guardian live coverage & summary (26 Aug 2025): https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/aug/26/nigel-farage-mass-deportations-reform-migration-small-boats-uk-politics-live
(8) U.S. comparative evidence on the costs/effects of mass deportation and detention (CBO & GAO analyses; DHS/ICE budgets). For the claim that mass detention and deportation in the US has been hugely costly and contested, cite CBO and DHS/ICE budget material:
Congressional Budget Office — Effects of the Immigration Surge on the Federal Budget and the Economy (example CBO analyses): https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60569
DHS/ICE budget documents and detention operating-cost context: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/U.S.%20IMMIGRATION%20AND%20CUSTOMS%20ENFORCEMENT_Remediated.pdf
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