Nigel Farage unveiled Reform’s £2billion plans to deport hundreds of thousands of people should he ever arrive in Downing Street. He is the biggest single threat to the unity of this country, writes Darren Lewis
Reform has just four MPs. They are a fringe party.
That they enjoy so much mainstream coverage to generate fear and loathing throughout the country towards refugees and people who look like me is a damning indictment on the people who should know better.
Because Nigel Farage’s “migration plan” was a manifesto of hate. He is a big tech version of Enoch Powell. How the hell did we get to a place where we are broadcasting the xenophobia of vicious extremists as legitimate political discourse?
This is a privileged millionaire whose stated aim is to lock up children whose crime would be a request to live in safety. Let that sink in.
He and his risible supporting cast want to continue characterising them, their mothers and their fathers as one homogenous mass to get his followers to see them one way: as criminals, rapists and terrorists.
He wants to hand “sweeping” powers for detention to the Home Secretary so that “hundreds of thousands” of people can be deported.
In other words, we really could see people disappeared off the street and bundled into vans as we do in the US.
It is “what normal countries” do, he said. Do you think he will stop at refugees or asylum seekers?
He wants to drive a wedge between us all and attempted to do just that with his binary ‘Whose side are you on?’ question.
One respected broadcaster excitedly described his promise to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights as “novel”. Give me strength.
When Farage has succeeded in hoodwinking voters into agreeing, what happens when a non-migrant wants, for example, the right to a fair trial?
What happens when an ordinary UK citizen wants the right to know why they are arrested – or the right to be released pending trial?
Farage calls the treaties there to protect us “outdated”. He calls the courts that see through his rhetoric “dubious”. It would be easy to write him off as a poundshop version of someone else we know on the other side of the Atlantic.
The truth is, he is the biggest single threat to the unity of this country. He wants prison camps.
He wants the UK to quit the Refugee Convention and the UN Convention against Torture.
He wants to take away the capability of any judicial entity to expose the illegality of his intentions – is that the kind of country we want?
Because when Farage and his divisive rhetoric sends the UK up in flames and we start to see the flagrant human rights violations now commonplace in the US, the people platforming him will be culpable.
The political class who gave his comments credence over parties with more MPs. The flagship TV shows like Question Time that handed him a season ticket. The breakfast shows who indulged his fearmongering and the reality TV shows like I’m A Celebrity that normalised his hate.
In today’s speech he warned of a threat to public order when the footage we have seen has been of those whipped up by him, harassing families guilty of nothing.
His claim that “many of these young men come from countries in which women aren’t even second-class citizens” was an absolute disgrace.
His claim that “women and girls are far less safe on the streets than when this began” was an outright lie.
His defiant claim that he would detain refugee women and children under his plans should send a shiver down all of our spines.
When asked how far back he would go, he actually cited the Windrush generation, saying: “People who came here nearly 70 years ago had faulty paperwork.”
When the man from the Financial Times pressed him on the detail and the fact that the numbers of migrants here is comparatively low compared to other EU nations, Farage had nothing but waffle.
When he claimed the country is “not very far from major civil disorder” he may as well have added: “I’ll keep doing all I can to ensure we get there.”
His sustained pattern of anti-migrant rhetoric – and the willingness of big platforms to amplify it – has taken us here.
Those platforms taking the incendiary lines from his speeches that will drive the most traffic are unwittingly fanning the flames of discord that will endanger millions of people around the country, some of whom work for those same platforms.
This is a moment for us to decide what kind of country we want to be. Do we want to stand up to hate or do we want to allow poisonous Farage to take us into the abyss?