Nigel Farage has suggested a crime crackdown that voters will pay through the nose for, says Fleet Street Fox. Here’s who’s really going down
A survey has shown that 49 per cent of people think Britain is “becoming a lawless country”, most think rising crime is fuelled by immigrants, and nearly a third think Nigel Farage is the only political leader who can tackle it.
And it just goes to show how talking complete tripe for decades can convince millions that a lie is true. For crime is historically low, we’ve literally got more laws every day including some which make it illegal to be an immigrant, and Farage has the same chance of improving the situation as a bowl of jelly in a plane crash.
That has not stopped him presenting his perfectly-timed crime manifesto, putting criminals “on notice” that if they don’t behave themselves by 2029 when he expects to enter office, they will be given zero tolerance by the police, locked up with no time off for good behaviour, and sent to El Salvador to rot in a supermax.
Which, to the terminally-gullible who answer political pollsters, probably all sounds marvellous. The only problem is…. well, all of it, to be honest. Let’s investigate, shall we?
First, Farage says he’ll build lots of shiny new prisons on unused Ministry of Defence land. The MoD is one of the biggest landowners in Britain, so this would make sense, if only so much of it wasn’t mountains, bogs, and shooting ranges. It’s unlikely the good people of Wiltshire, the Brecon Beacons, or Northumbrian moors will appreciate the sudden arrival of concrete brutalism and barbed wire, but perhaps ripping up environmental planning rules will help him get that one over the line.
He may find it difficult to staff them, though. The Prison Service has high rates of vacancies and absenteeism, and those officers keenest to go to work either have a vocation to help the illiterate, troubled, and mentally-ill, or they’re getting £500 a throw for bringing in monkey dust.
One of the ways in which prisoners are kept calm, and encouraged to go to classes and rehabilitate, is the promise of early release for good behaviour. Which Farage says he’ll scrap that and bring in full-tariff sentences, to which he’ll have to add full body armour and life insurance for the poor POs who’ll be getting shanked twice a day by someone with nothing left to lose.
He also wants to bring in mandatory life sentences for drug smuggling. So long, Sir Paul McCartney, and thanks for all the tunes.
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Farage is going to make sure police investigate every single crime, no matter how small. While at the same time saying small crimes, like tweeting about burning people to death, don’t matter so much. And after he’s conscripted every last one of us into a police uniform and covered half the Green Belt in prisons, he will be deporting the “most serious offenders” to the most notorious drug gang prisons in El Salvador.
The problem with El Salvador is, well, everything. Women who suffer medical crises during pregnancy get jailed for aggravated homicide. A state of emergency means disappearances and illegal detentions, at least a third of them innocent according to Amnesty International. And while it is a signatory to human rights treaties the president just reinterpreted the constitution to get himself elected for an illegal term in office, so you can imagine how well everything else is going.
For the UK Parliament and judicial system to send prisoners there would involve tearing up all our own human rights laws. And while there may be some who say, yay, no more human rights for criminals, that would also mean no more human rights for YOU.
YOU try being wrongly convicted, like Andrew Malkinson, and arguing for your release from a terrorist supermax. YOU try getting vital information from a terrorist from 5,500 miles away. YOU calculate how much of your taxes will go in the pocket of corrupt henchmen of el presidente. YOU try being the grieving relative who thought your child’s killer was going to be behind bars for life, and told that he killed himself before he even stepped on the plane. None of it would feel as good as Farage is trying to make it sound.
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The basis for Farage’s mad dash for dictatorship is that he wants to halve the crime rate, because “Britain is lawless” and “crime has become commonplace”.
Except crime has been falling since the 1990s, when 2 in 5 people were victims, and now it’s about 1 in 5. Some crimes are increasing, particularly violent ones and offences against women, but the overall trend is still downwards, even including crime survey figures and online fraud.
But he’s not suggesting criminalising misogyny, or introducing knife sale licences, or getting kids off the streets and into more optimistic pastimes. He’ll be locking up mums forced to import their own CBD medication for epileptic children, destroying national parks, and wasting billions turning Britain into a police state for a crime wave that’s on the ebb.
The real reason for all this is because Donald Trump got re-elected for spouting all this crap, and Farage dreams of similar success by doing the same. But he has forgotten a couple of very important points.
First, political polls aside, Britain has a smaller proportion of people thick enough to go for it. If you doubt me, count all the votes for Reform, then look at where they are, then ask yourself if there’ll ever be enough in one place for more than a few dozen MPs.
Secondly, look at his MPs. And the ones who were his MPs until a few weeks ago, because for people so keen on publicly flagellating others, they lose the whip with alarming regularity. It’s not a party that will ever be in a fit shape to outwit Whitehall, courts, and Parliament, three things Trump has never had to deal with.
Even leaving aside the likelihood of some enterprising journalist finding a knife-wielding, drug smuggling shareholder in a private prison firm in the ranks of Reform UK, there is an even greater problem with this crime crackdown. Farage has just suggested nationalising water companies with a private sector buyout, which means he’s so thick he’s probably answering all these polls himself. He wants to look tough, but he just sounds bonkers.