A Reform UK proposal to prioritise places that vote for Green councils or MPs when it sets up detention centres for migrants facing deportations has been denounced as “abhorrent” from opponents across the political spectrum.
Reform says it would deport “all illegal migrants” and, to make this possible, it has announced plans for deportation centres holding up to 24,000 people.
In a post on social media, Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesperson, said that these would be located in Green-voting areas. He explained:
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
Given @ZackPolanski openly advocates for open borders, I look forward to their warm embrace of this policy.
Yusuf also promoted the slogan “Vote Green, Get Illegals” on his post.
In an interview with Sky News, Yusuf said that Reform accepted that deportating migrants on the scale proposed by his party would be unprecedented for the UK, although he said it had been done in other countries. He said this policy was about ensuring there was “democratic consent” for the policy.
Responding to the announcement, Mothin Ali, the Green party’s co-deputy leader, said:
Reform keep making abhorrent announcements to distract voters from they fact they want to privatise the NHS. Greens are focused on building council housing, fixing our public services and bringing down the cost of living.
Anna Turley, the Labour chair, said:
This grotesque policy reveals Reform’s contempt for all voters – including their own. Threatening to punish places where people don’t vote your way is a betrayal of basic democratic principles. Nigel Farage has sunk to a new low: he is clearly more interested in stoking division and anger than in serving the whole country.
And, on social media, Kemi Badenoch reposted a tweet from Simon Clarke, the Tory former business secretary, saying:
We need to stop illegal immigration, but this is abhorrent from Reform.
Zia is proposing the siting of detention centres expressly as a form of political punishment for people and places that don’t vote Reform – not just Green, but presumably Conservative, Liberal and Labour too. (And what about Reform voters in those constituencies?)
It would almost certainly be deemed an abuse of ministerial power for political purposes, and as such would likely be stuck down in court before ever being implemented, wasting millions for the taxpayer without detaining anyone.
If it were to go ahead, it would still represent an appalling waste of public money as these sites might well not be in any way suitable for the proposed centres, or near the other infrastructure required. What’s worse is that he is doing all this to provoke outrage and draw attention to Reform a few days out from the local elections. Reform know what they are doing. But this goes beyond a pre-election stunt. It’s declared as a major policy commitment, and should be treated as such.
We need a proper plan to leave the ECHR and restore safe border controls, not gimmicks that wouldn’t survive first contact with reality.
