Farage’s new immigration plan is cruelty as a governing principle
Ah, Nigel Farage is back, like athlete’s foot for the body politic. Just when you thought we’d scraped him off the heel of national life, he reappears to announce that, if elected, he’ll remove the right to remain from migrants, because nothing says “taking back control” like taking away the basic human rights of people who already live, work, and pay taxes here.
It’s not even policy, really. It’s performative sadism with a filing fee. Imagine the red tape. Entire new departments of grim bureaucrats hired to unpick paperwork, deport breadwinners, and send “Sorry, you no longer exist” letters to NHS nurses.
It would cost billions, cause chaos, and leave migrants in constant fear that tomorrow might be the day they’re told to pack up their lives and go. Which, incidentally, is already happening, the fear bit, not the efficient paperwork bit. Britain hasn’t done efficiency since about 2010. I guess the fear is the point of it all.
Migrants not ex-pats
It’s the Donald Trump playbook, of course: create a crisis, hurt vulnerable people, call it strength. Tough on the people who aren’t British. Bind a flailing nation together by hating the guy who delivers your Deliveroo. The irony is, Farage’s own French girlfriend will probably be exempt, white migrants, after all, are always “expats.”
At its core, this isn’t policy. It’s philosophy, the kind that belongs in the school of “might makes right.” The powerful can do what they like to the powerless, and if you object, you’re a woke snowflake who hates the flag. It’s the worldview of the pub bore who thinks “bullying” is just another word for “leadership”. Thanks to years of the mainstream press presenting Farage as a lovable rogue rather than the political equivalent of a wasp in your pint, this outlook has gone national.
Double standards
Of course, the press has thoroughly laundered Farage’s far-right views into common sense. Remember when Simon Jenkins called Farage’s opinions on Russia “not outlandish”? Or when The Spectator published a soft-focus ode to his “red-blooded romantic charm”? A certain section of society finds Farage endlessly appealing, partly because he won’t turn on them until it’s far too late, partly because they hate the people he hates, and partly because they like the idea that their rage hardon has come to life and is polling well to be the next Prime Minister.
Imagine a journalist writing something like the above about Jeremy Corbyn or Zack Polanski’s love life. There’d be rolling news coverage, three emergency COBRA meetings, and Piers Morgan live-tweeting his aneurysm. Or it would simply never get published.
Yet here we are, with Farage, the eternal pub bellend of British politics, shaping the national agenda. He’s been normalised by columnists who mistake cruelty for leadership and “plain speaking” for being prejudiced. His brand of politics has always been about punching down and calling it patriotism.
A playground ruled by bullies
Keir Starmer, bless him, did call Reform’s plan “racist and immoral”, which it absolutely is, but then Labour goes and tweets about how many people they’re deporting, hoping that cruelty is a vote winner in Nuneaton. You can’t out-tough Farage on immigration. You can only dignify his game by playing it. This is both morally and tactically the wrong call from Labour.
If you think this ends with migrants, think again. Authoritarianism never does. Today it’s your neighbour from Poland. Tomorrow it’s your teacher, your nurse, your journalist, or you, when you post something Nigel doesn’t like. The day after that its newspapers printing the government line and universities being shut down. Just look at Hungary.
Farage’s Britain isn’t a country. It’s a playground ruled by bullies, where decency is weakness and empathy is for losers. The only thing more terrifying than that vision is how many people seem ready to cheer it on.
