In a more even-tempered encounter with the media than usual, Nigel Farage managed to get through the launch of perhaps his party’s most radical proposal yet without too much incident – or, indeed, detail.
Despite the production of a tendentiously titled pamphlet (Prioritising UK Citizens), there was little sign that Farage and his Reform UK colleague Zia Yusuf had entirely thought through the likely consequences of the central proposal of their immigration strategy: to abolish the status of “indefinite leave to remain” (ILR).
At times, their claims were backed up by questionable statistics, such as that their policies could save some £230bn for the Exchequer, a figure produced by the Centre for Policy Studies and withdrawn as a basis for policy-making before Reform’s latest headline-grabbing press conference. (Mr Farage and Mr Yusuf ploughed on regardless.)
They offered no evidence that people with a work visa and contemplating applying for ILR, or their families, were entirely living on benefits. Still less was there any backing for the notion that many of them “do not work, have never worked and will never work”. In fact, many who join a spouse or parent in the UK as a “dependent” are misleadingly termed, because they can and do go out to work, and pay their taxes – while paying fees upfront to use the NHS.
When reporters asked for evidence, the Reform UK leaders often shrugged and said the government was “hiding” the data. Or that all they wanted was to have a debate. In which case, it would have been more sensible for them to have the debate before publishing their unfinished policy.
The subtext of Reform UK’s latest policy launch was purely political: a personal attack on Boris Johnson as a credible alternative leader of the British right. Absurd as it sounds, Mr Farage sniffs danger – and virtually declared as much: “The main objective of today’s press conference is to wake everybody up to the ‘Boriswave’” – the influx of millions of immigrants from around the world after the former prime minister ended EU citizens’ free movement in 2021.
Mr Farage’s emphasis was continually on the fiscal impact of recent immigration – taxes paid versus benefits drawn. This is hazardous to estimate, not least because it makes no allowance for the broad contribution migrants make to the economy, by boosting the national income. But the reduction of anyone to a fiscal balance sheet is not only pointless, it is also offensive. If, for example, someone comes to the UK and works for most of their life, uses the NHS sparingly and doesn’t survive long enough to draw the state pension, does that make them a more or less economically desirable human being than, say, a British citizen suffering severe disabilities who is reliant on the state? And what if that immigrant worker with ILR is helping give round-the-clock care to that British citizen? Mr Farage and Mr Yusuf seem to be taking cost-benefit a little too far.
At one point, Mr Farage was asked about his other big idea, that benefits would only be paid to UK citizens, including the state pension. He was indignant: “The pensioners probably have British citizenship. If they don’t, why on earth are we paying them all the pension?” The short answer, of course, is: because they’ve earned it.
No one, British citizen or otherwise, gets the pension without minimum levels of national insurance contributions: 10 years for the “new state pension”, and, if their national insurance record started after April 2016, 35 qualifying years to get the full rate. That is why someone who has lived and worked in Britain for decades is, and should be, entitled to their pension whether they’ve got around to applying for a British passport or not.
It suggests that this at-best embryonic notion from Reform UK could, if not subjected to proper scrutiny, descend into another Windrush scandal.
Mr Farage has long been so obsessed by immigration, even the legal, orderly kind, that he pretty much blames it for all the nation’s ills. It was his theme in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and it is the same now – including blaming the migrants who are actually working in the public services for the pressure upon those very services.
But even Mr Yusuf has to concede that, without amelioration, Reform UK’s plans would mean the collapse of the nation’s care homes, and destitution for those who live in them. To prevent that happening, he insists there would still be special visas for the care sector – but attached to an expensive training levy that would be used to recruit (non-existent) British volunteers. Given that the local councils that fund the system are barely afloat now, under Reform UK, they would therefore go bust. it would be utter, life-threatening chaos.
It needs to be said: Britain needs immigration to prosper, or even function, because there aren’t enough young people to cope with an ageing population – and Elon Musk’s robots aren’t ready to undertake intimate social care.
In place of audited figures and detailed policy, we find herds of scapegoats. Mr Farage even says immigration is responsible for the state of the roads; Mr Yusuf blames scrounging migrants, luxuriating on state benefits their entire lives, for pushing Britain towards bankruptcy.
The truth, of course, is that the huge mortgage the nation took out to pay for supporting the economy during Covid is what has ballooned the national debt; and Brexit, not immigration, is responsible for depressing investment, trade and economic growth since 2016 – £40bn a year in lost tax revenues.
Yet even now, Mr Farage wants “more Brexit” and is prepared to use the rights of EU nationals resident in the UK as part of his renegotiation of the Brexit deal. Mr Farage wants to be prime minister, but his slew of recent policy initiatives illustrates only how far his ambitions are running ahead of reality. Not for the first time, he is promising more than he can deliver.
