Have mass deportations become a vote-winning ticket in the UK?

Chris Doyle

What to make of a British political leader who pledges to deport 600,000 immigrants in his first term? That is 120,000 people a year. This would even include doing a deal with the Taliban, a movement the UK was fighting against for so many years, to facilitate deportations to Afghanistan.

This is the jaw-dropping, headline-grabbing proposition that far-right leader of the Reform UK party, Nigel Farage, made in a speech last week. He claims this would only cost £10 billion ($13.5 billion). Other estimates veer closer to the £50 billion mark. Farage typically could not explain how this would be funded.

Not long ago, such a statement from such a person would have been heralded as loony fringe political idiocy. Not so in 2025. Farage’s party now heads the polls by as much as 10 percent and it has momentum. Farage’s populist antics are cutting through and he is successfully whipping up every anti-immigrant emotion possible. His other tactic is to warn of the very violence that he has been stirring up. “We are not far away from major civil disorder. It is an invasion, as these young men illegally break into our country,” he said last week.

The racist part is the fixation on attacking every nonwhite person coming to the UK as a vile criminal and threat to the British way of life. In the past, this would not have worked.

Equally as extraordinary as the outlandish and vile proposals from Farage is the stunning absence of a response from Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his government. No minister challenged the reference to an “invasion.” It is as if they are unable or even unwilling to mount any challenge to the Reform momentum.

Not only is this wrong in terms of a failure to challenge xenophobic hate speech, but it is also poor politics. The Labour Party and, for that matter, the Conservatives, are never going to outbid Farage for the anti-immigrant vote. Starmer, for example, does not push to leave the European Convention on Human Rights but to work to reform it — a position reminiscent of David Cameron’s failure to renegotiate Britain’s membership of the EU and freedom of movement.

And the target that Farage has given his opponents is unmissable for those prepared to take the pot shot and go at him. Reform’s plans are simply unworkable, just as many of the Conservatives’ plans were when they were in office. There is barely any detail and even what is there is imprecise. Farage knows his polling success does not hinge on expertise and detail. His narrative, his story, however mired in venom, is what counts.

Presenting Britain as being taken over by an invasion of foreigners works. Even then, the facts do not back Farage up. On a per capita basis, the UK received the 17th-highest number of asylum applications if one includes all 27 EU member states plus Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Refugees constitute a mere 0.5 percent of the UK population.

The Starmer approach is tinkering around the edges. The government is trying to speed up the asylum decision-making process to reduce the backlog and ensure the removal of those whose application is denied. But it lacks any semblance of realistic strategy as to how to reduce immigration to reasonable amounts, uphold Britain’s obligations to legitimate asylum seekers and reassure the ever-growing percentage of the population that has succumbed to Farage’s scare tactics.

Farage would have to wage war on the British judiciary, as most far-right groups have always done. This would include going after what he calls “activist judges.” He would have to take Britain out of human rights treaties including the European Convention on Human Rights, which would have major implications for the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. Farage would also disapply the 1951 UN Refugee Convention for a five-year period — and expect Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to follow suit in backing this in October.

Whether one likes it or not, mass deportations are now a vote-winning ticket in many countries. Large swathes of populations are treated no better than herds of cattle. We have also seen this in the US. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is, for different reasons, seeking the same for Palestinians, attempting to force them out of Gaza and much of the West Bank.

The case for why immigration matters is not being made, or rather it is not being listened to because many are trying but they do not get the airtime in a right-wing-dominated media environment. Most European countries, including the UK, depend on migrant labor. For example, the health services in these countries would collapse without immigration. Their societies are enriched by all the skills and experiences immigrant populations have brought.

All this plays out across Europe and in North America. Immigration is increasingly being seen as an evil. Few understand the differences between an economic migrant and a genuine asylum seeker fleeing war and persecution. The far right has a narrative. Other political trends either try to mimic this or sit on the fence, devoid of any policy. Hate and fear is winning.

Courtesy: arabnews