Very little of what Nigel Farage set out at Oxford airport should have come as a surprise. The Reform UK leader’s stance on what he calls illegal migration has been largely consistent over many years and his speech was nothing if not well trailed – promises of immediate detentions and deportations, the UK leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), suspending other inconvenient agreements and sidelining judges.
It was a wish-list for those wanting the UK to take a much tougher line on everything to do with asylum and migration. The announcement, then, was a matter of spelling out how a Reform government might put its plans into effect.
