Let's stop pretending that Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain Party and Nigel Farage's Reform UK are running different agendas. It is already clear that they co-exist to simultaneously fuel the rightward shift towards fascism in the UK.
A week after Lowe's promise to deport hundreds of thousands of people a year, Reform is now promising to deport 288,000 a year (a curiously precise number) with five flights a day planned to deport people from this country to destinations unnamed and with no certainty that they would be granted the right to land.
As The Guardian notes this morning:
Reform UK would create an ICE-style agency dedicated to deporting hundreds of thousands of people, as well as terminating the status of those with indefinite leave to remain (ILR), the party will say.
It would also ban the conversion of churches into mosques and fund a radical expansion of stop and search, the party's new home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, will also say in a speech on Monday. The deradicalisation programme Prevent would also have its mandate redrawn to focus on Islamist extremism.
So:
- We would get our own Gestapo, because ICE behaves in that fashion in the USA.
- We will have a "hostile environment" for all migrants, including those legally settled here, and so of their children who were born here and are automatically British citizens.
- We will have legalised violence imposed on anyone the state presumes to be an enemy, because we can be quite sure that this will not only be migrants or people from ethnic minorities: this will be rule by terror. Anyone else that Farage's state might decide to target will also be in their sightlines. Think the LGBTQ+ community, trade unionists, awkward academics, bloggers they do not like, anyone whose face "does not fit", those with disabilities and those who are neurodivergent, and more.
- We will get Christianity imposed by law.
- We will have full-blown fascism.
- And, of course, we will have an economic meltdown, as none of this is possible without that meltdown happening.
So what are the mainstream parties saying in response? According to The Guardian:
Labour said the plans were divisive and showed that Reform was planning “to deport people who have followed the rules, worked hard and built their lives here – our friends, neighbours and colleagues”.
The Labour party's chair, Anna Turley, said the policies were “a direct attack on settled families and fundamentally un-British”. She added: “Britain is a proud, tolerant and diverse nation, which stands in opposition to the kind of divisive politics stoked by Reform.”
This makes me very angry.
These plans aren't best described as "divisive". Nor are they about "following the rules". And neither do we just need to say we "stand in opposition to divisive policies". This is all just pathetically "nice". It's almost as if a Labour Party that appointed Shabana Mahmood as Home Secretary is, in reality, happy for this to happen. That's because if it were serious in its opposition to Refor,m it would be saying that Reform is planning state terrorism against large parts of the UK population, and it is planning authoritarianism, and it is doing so in a way that will cost lives and livelihoods whilst the well-being of millions will be destroyed by the politics of hate that Farage is proposing.
This is not the time for pussy-footing as if Farage is a Tory.
This is the time for calling out fascism and the stark ugliness of what is being proposed here when what is planned is the destruction of well-being of people, communities, ways of life and, quite candidly, this country as it has always been - which is a small island state that has always offered a welcome to people coming and going, adding value when they decide to stay and make this their home, in all the rich diversity that we have to offer. Literally, what Farage is planning is to tear us apart. When will Labour, as the government, say that?
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Not all UK citizens are taken in by Deform or Destore:
https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2026/02/22/reform-door-knocker/
Go on missus – tell us what you really think. Continuing on a positive note: Manchester by-election looks like going to the Greens.
May will be interesting. Of course, there could be “evetns” between now & then.
I look forward to Friday morning when I hope to see Hannah Spencer show that Hope not Hate is the way to deal with inequality not demonising migrants. Zia Yusuf is an extremely unpleasant individual who like Farage needs calling out. Many current Reform voters would be horrified by what Lowe is suggesting. They just want a reverse of the decline they see and feel they are missing out. Trump is showing how awful the implementation of such policies is, with innocent people being locked up and those defending them murdered by poorly trained forces. I don’t believe the average Brit wants this on our streets. Most voters don’t read manifestos; look at how many voted for Labour with a very thin manifesto that promised very little. I remain hopeful that Farage will soon be seen for the total charlatan he is.
It is quite puzzling that Zia Yusuf considers Reform his political home, despite being (from his Wikipedia page) a first generation immigrant and from a muslim background – precisely the sort of people that Reform want to send “home”.
I wonder if the LINO response is due to their obsession with focus groups and we must not upset the red wall.
Don’t expect no steer or any of the others to produce something like a principle to counter garbage.
Might it be that the “orthodox” opposition parties, not least Labour, do not speak, let alone act, clearly and with decisiveness against main stream media accommodating rising fascism because doing so would admit/present the whole-society failing nature and consequences of their past and present Neoliberal policies and practices?
They need to start with an apology
I wouldn’t trust what Labour has been saying on this. They don’t have strong form on understanding the difference between what is legal and illegal. The Prime Minister is not nick-named two tier for nothing.
Labour are not fit to kiss Tony Benn’s gravestone. They have gutted the party. Even old style Tories would do a Ted Heath on this, but local Labour (what’s left of them) do not even dare turn up at anti-Nazi demonstrations or voice any opinions at all. And who do they attack, if not Reform/Advance/Restore? The Greens of course.
Your conclusion is correct, and highlights the absurdity
All these ravings about immigration from a man who planned to take a boat to Chagos without the correct documentation. The irony is inescapable.
If there are any tabloid journalists reading this blog, such as the Daily Mirror, Star or Metro, please run with the headline “REFORM UK PLANNING BRITISH GESTAPO”. It might make Reform voters rethink their allegiance to this totalitarian fascist party.
Labour isn’t decrying fascism as they themselves are planning Fascism Lite, or, I can’t Believe it’s Not Fascism, if you will. It’s why they are in bed with big tech and Palantir. The beige, centre-right, neoliberal consensus has collapsed, and its only means of survival in the face of the rising Left and Right is to lock the population down in a tightly controlled state of perpetual surveillance. Or am I being paranoid?
You are not being paranoid. Our eyes are now wide open.
These Reform/Restore/Repulsive people who claim they’ll detain 24,000 migrants at a time and deport up to 288,000 people a year : I trust that among the first to be expelled will be the foreign millionaires who swan in and buy up property in London and elsewhere, denying housing to decent hard-working tax-payers, the ones whose labour actually keeps this country running. Britain should be for the people who contribute, not for rich parasites! We don’t want wealthy Californians owning country houses in the Cotswolds, or bloated oil barons buying up luxury flats in Bayswater, and the sooner they’re all forcibly repatriated (and their property sequestrated) the better. Reclaim our culture, too! For far too long we’ve had our uniquely British culture infiltrated by the creeping evil of Americanisation – why, even our schools are shamefully forcing our innocent children to read books by American writers, teaching them an alien way of life and incorrect spelling. Enough is enough!
Sequestration? Too far.
But selling England by the pound? Also, too far.