Give me the keys to No10 and I’ll end small boats crisis in 14 days – it’s simple
The Reform UK leader’s remarks come on the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum.
Nigel Farage EXCLUSIVE: Reform leader on stopping the boats
Nigel Farage insists he can stop small boat migrant crossings within a fortnight if he becomes Prime Minister. The Reform UK leader is confident of delivering on the promise if he enters No 10.
The two-week pledge was one of the standout announcements of his keynote speech at the Reform UK conference last year. He has since indicated that he would stop the boats within two weeks of passing laws that he says would allow him to deport migrants quickly. But speaking exclusively to the Express, Mr Farage claimed it’s “dead simple” to cut crossings to zero.
Asked if he could do it in two weeks of taking office, he said: “Oh yeah. Tony Abbott did it, the Australian Prime Minister in 2012.
“If you remove the pull factors, they won’t pay the traffickers, it’s dead simple.”
His remarks came during a special episode of our weekday news show, the Daily Expresso, recorded in Mr Farage’s Clacton constituency to mark the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum today.
Reform UK has also suggested it would be prepared to deport 600,000 migrants over five years if it won power at the next general election.
Mr Farage has previously said his party would bar anyone who came to the UK on a small boat from claiming asylum.
Key to the plan is the passage of a new law called the Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill.
Reform UK says the bill would create a legal duty for the home secretary to remove illegal migrants, and ban anyone who had been deported from re-entering the UK for life.
The bill would also “disapply” international treaties like the Refugee Convention, a 1951 treaty that prevents signatory countries like the UK from returning refugees to countries where they face serious threats to their life or freedom.
Nigel Farage on a boat to see migrants crossing the channel from France to calais (Image: Reform)
Under former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s offshore detention policy, asylum-seeker vessels were controversially turned back to Indonesia and would-be refugees sent to Papua New Guinea and Nauru in the Pacific for processing and resettlement.
In June 2014, Mr Abbott said Australia had marked six months since the last asylum-seeker boat arrival in December 2013 – a few months after he took office.
