Last September, Reform leader Nigel Farage dismissed a policy of mass deportations as a “political impossibility”. Now, a year on, the party has pledged to deport up to 600,000 illegal migrants and retrospectively strip indefinite leave to remain from people already settled in the UK.
This is a drastic lurch to the right, even for Reform. Only last year the party was saying it seeks to represent the “silent majority” and keep out “extremists”.
In explaining this shift, Reform politicians would probably claim this is what the silent majority wants. They would point to a hardening of public opinion on illegal migration.
