Reform branded ‘threat to democracy’ over Farage plan to remove thousands of migrants with leave to be in UK
Good morning. Last month Reform UK unveiled its “Operation Restoring Justice” plan for the mass deportation of people living in Britain without permission to be here. It was aimed at illegal immigrants, but Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, proposed deportation on an unprecedented scale , without being clear as to quite how many people would be affected. Today he is committing Reform (which is currently well ahead of other parties in national opinion polls) to an even more draconian approach. He says Reform would abolish indefinite leave to remain – the immigration status that allows people to remain in the UK for as long as they want, often the first step towards citizenship.
Crucially, this would not just be for new applicants; it would be retrospective, applying to people who already have indefinite leave to remain. Instead, people would have to apply for a five-year visa, with tougher conditions.
In an article for the Daily Mail, Farage says this policy is intended to reverse what he calls “the Boriswave” – the huge increase in legal migration that happened when Boris Johnson was prime minister.
The Johnson government allowed the number of people getting work visas to soar largely to compensate for the fact that EU workers were leaving because of Brexit, which was the policy that Farage arguably did more than anyone else to make happen. But he does not address this point in his article.
Instead, he says:
Today, I can announce that Reform will go even further.
We will abolish indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status, which grants migrants the right to live, work and study in the UK permanently with full access to Britain’s health and benefits system.
This threatens to bankrupt our bloated welfare state.
We will rescind ILR statuses that have already been granted. We will also restore the treasured status of British citizenship.
Why is this so urgent? Starting from January 2026, if nothing is done to stop it, those 3.8 million migrants will become eligible for ILR.
Let’s be clear, these migrants are not doctors, engineers or entrepreneurs. Many of those eligible for ILR never work and never will. Many are young and old dependants who followed family members here. They are now a burden on the welfare state …
Once we abolish ILR, foreign nationals who want to work here will have 180 days to apply for a tough, new five-year renewable visa. They will have no right to benefits or healthcare without insurance. And no right to bring dependants, unless they are high earners who can afford to keep them.
We are giving British business plenty of notice that the era of cheap foreign labour is over.
In a separate article for the Daily Express, Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of government efficiency, is explicit about how this is intended to ensure hundreds of thousands of people leave the country.
These changes will lead to hundreds of thousands of people having to apply and ultimately losing their settled status in the UK, which will be done on a staggered and orderly basis to allow businesses to train British workers to replace them. Many of those who will lose their leave to remain are entirely dependent on the welfare state and will leave voluntarily upon losing access to benefits. Those that don’t will be subject to immigration enforcement as part of our mass deportation programme – Operation Restoring Justice.
Reform currently only have five MPs but, given what the polls are saying, and the breakdown of support for the traditional parties the prospect of Farage being the next PM is being taken seriously. No British government in the modern era has contemplated a deportation policy on this scale, and what Farage is proposing is close to “remigration”, something that has been taboo in mainstream UK politics since Enoch Powell was sacked from the Tory shadow cabinet after his rivers of blood speech.
The Liberal Democrats are holding their conference this week and in interviews this morning Ed Davey, their leader, said his party was best placed to defeat Reform. Branding Reform a “threat to our democracy, to things we hold dear, British values – decency, tolerance, respect for the rule of law”, he said the Lib Dems were the only party beating them in local elections.
Morning: Liberal Democrats resume their conference debates in Bournemouth. Victoria Collins, the science spokesperson, is speaking at 11.05am, Calum Miller, the foreign affairs spokesperson, at 2.40pm, and at 2.55pm there is a “Reformwatch” session with councillors. There is a fuller agenda here.
Morning: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is on a visit to Gatwick to promote the government’s plan to allow the construction of a second runway there.
11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, holds a press conference.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm BST at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Key events
Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future thinktank, which focuses on migration, race and identify, has posted a threat on Bluesky which raises questions he hopes Nigel Farage addresses at this press conference. Katwala says:
Have Reform been asked if forcing all foreign nationals with settled status to apply for a new temporary status really does mean renewing on & tearing up the UK/EU citizens agreements after Brexit? I would exoect/hope they would quickly exempt EU settled status from this
It is clearly a conscious decision to strip those with settled status and indefinite leave to remain of it. That is reprehensible in principle (and leaves the door open to applying this to citizens too) while changing the settlement rules for those here with temporary status can be “future policy”
Challenging this for EU nationals, non-EU nationals and refugees is right
The EU settled status point is a direct breach of commitments, which Farage supported, and which is reprehensible to Europeans in Britain, with dangers for UK citizens in EU from reneging on the commitments to respect rights
Applying it to EU nationals will be unpopular with public – most Leave voters – because as an 84% consensus for “apply new rules to future arrivals, give the right to settle to those already here” so enacting that by 2020 before threatening to rip it up in 2029 is so obviously unfair & dishonourable
The 84% support (90% remain + 77% leave) was reflected in my coalition of unusual allies – vote leave, migration watch, ukip, toby young + cbi, tuc, universities, migrants groups – a week after the 2016 referendum on the principle of letting those here stay & settle www.britishfuture.org/15131/
The online right is pressing rightwing politiciand to significant and extreme over-reach in advocating remigration & repatriation policies. This excites the racists who want to go for naturalised citizens & UK-born minorities. Damaging if the mainstream does not challenge the overreach,
Mainstream are hamstrung on 2019-24 arrivals
Cons want to atone for tripling net migration by now adopting send them back language to those they invited in
Lab govt dug itself into a hole with half-formed back of envelope White Paper ideas when it had given so little thought to what it wants to do
The Reform UK press conference is starting soon.
There is a live feed here and at the top of this blog (you may have to refresh the page to see it)
Lib Dems back motion saying government should start talks on UK joining customs union with EU ‘immediately’
At their conference Liberal Democrat members have passed a motion urging the government to adopt a more ambitious “reset” policy with the EU. In particular, it says minister should “immediately [begin] talks on agreeing a new, bespoke UK–EU customs union, which would cut red tape for businesses across our country and act as an antidote to anaemic economic growth”, and move “rapidly to agree a youth mobility scheme”.
You can read the full text of all motions being debate at the Lib Dem conference here, and the amendments are here.
Tory thinktank says Farage’s claim getting rid of indefinite leave to remain would save £234bn based on unreliable data
The Labour party has claimed that Reform UK’s announcement today about getting rid of indefinite leave to remain has already come apart. In a post on social media it says:
Today’s Reform announcement falls apart as the think tank it based its numbers on says they are wrong and “should no longer be used”.
In his Daily Mail article about his plans, Nigel Farage says:
Under Reform, welfare will only be for UK citizens. No foreign nationals will be entitled to any benefits.
Our changes will save British taxpayers at least £234bn over the lifetime of these migrants. That is four times our total defence budget, or double what is spent on education.
This figure came from a report published by the Centre for Policy Studies, a pro-Conservative thinktank. Highlighting the number of migrants who came to the UK between January 2021 and January 2024 and who would be eligible for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) by the end of the decade, it said:
In our central scenario, 801,000 migrants from the post-2020 wave gain ILR, the vast majority by the end of this decade
It is likely that many of these migrants, both workers and dependants, will represent a long-term cost to the taxpayer. Using the Office for Budget Responsibility’s assumptions about migrant earnings, our central estimate of the lifetime net fiscal cost is £234bn – equivalent to a bill of £8,200 for every UK household, spread out over several decades. However, it could be very considerably more.
But today the CPS put out a statement saying it has withdrawn that figures. It says:
As part of announcing a package of policies on Indefinite Leave to Remain, Reform UK have alluded to research published by the Centre for Policy Studies in February of this year. Part of the research calculated a ballpark figure for the financial cost of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who will soon be eligible to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR).
After the CPS’ report was published, the Office for Budget Responsibility revised their definitions of some of the fiscal data contained within our report, meaning that the overall cost estimates should no longer be used. The CPS has been in communication with the OBR and other experts for clarity and will be publishing an updated estimate in due course.
The changes do not impact our analysis of the visa data or projections for the numbers likely to gain ILR on different visa routes.
This is why Labour says the plan has fallen apart. As Jessica Elgot reports in her story on this, Labour has saying the “half-baked” Reform proposals are not credible.
The Labour party is very comfortable attacking Reform UK plans on technical, or practical grounds. But it is much rarer to hear Labour attacking what Reform is saying on the grounds of principle, and so far today no one prominent from the party has been doing that.
In part because the government announced its own plans earlier this year to tighten access to indefinite leave to remain.
John Swinney conducts mini-reshuffle after Jamie Hepburn’s resignation
Severin Carrell
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
John Swinney has switched an experienced minister, Graeme Dey, back to his previous role as parliamentary business manager after Friday’s resignation by Jamie Hepburn following an altercation at Holyrood.
Dey, who had been minister for higher education and veterans, had previously held the post of business manager, who has lead responsibility for steering the Scottish government’s increasingly busy legislative programme through the devolved parliament.
Hepburn quit after Douglas Ross, the former Scottish Conservative leader, accused him of assault for allegedly grabbing him by the shoulder. Hepburn disputed the assault claim but admitted swearing vigorously at Ross following a row over government inaction over aggressive gulls.
Dey will keep the brief as veterans minister; he has been succeeded as higher education minister by Ben McPherson, a former minister for local government who was passed over by Humza Yousaf, when he succeeded Nicola Sturgeon as first minister in March 2023.
Young and ambitious, McPherson’s brief is one of the toughest: Dundee university is embroiled in a seemingly intractable financial crisis, and has already had several bail-outs. Most others are also shedding staff and the focus of strikes by lecturers.
Ed Davey claims ‘two old parties’, Labour and Tories, cannot see off Reform UK, but Lib Dems can
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, did a round of interviews this morning to mark the fact that his party’s conference is taking place this week. He is giving his keynote speech closing the conference at 2.30pm tomorrow.
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Davey claimed that the “two old parties, Labour and the Conservatives” were not capable of seeing off the threat posed by Reform UK. Referring in particular to Nigel Farage’s party, he told the Today programme:
I think the threat to our democracy, to things we hold dear, British values – decency, tolerance, respect for the rule of law – are being challenged in a way that I can’t remember before.
And when I hear some of the leaders of the Conservative party and, particularly, Reform, they seem to be borrowing from Trump’s America and some of the ideas they’re putting forward I think would take our country backwards.
What’s increasingly clear is the voters no longer trust the two old parties, Labour and the Conservatives, and I think the next election could be about the change we want.
And it’s either change to Trump’s America with Reform or change based on really true British values, where we deal with improving the public services properly, we get the cost of living down by reducing people’s energy bills, we make people feel much better and improve our economy and society.
The Liberal Democrats were only formed as a party in 1988. But that was a merger of the SDP and the Liberal party, and the Liberal party, which dominated politics in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the first two decades of the twentieth century, is a lot older than the Labour party. When Davey says his party is not one of the “old parties”, what he really means is that is has not been one of the main parties for the past 100 years.
Since May, I think we’ve had head to head fights with them [Reform, in local council byelections]. We’ve won three quarters of them. We’re the only party who’s not lost a seat to Reform. I’m determined the Lib Democrats are the answer to this threat to our country.
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He repeatedly avoided questions about whether he would be willing to enter a coaltion with Labour after the election to stop Reform forming a government. In response to multiple questions about this on the Today programme, he said:
My moral responsibility as the leader of a party that has particular values is to speak up for those values and champion those values.
And at the moment, we’re the only party championing those values.
I’ve been deeply disappointed by the Labour Government. I think they’ve failed so many people – pensioners, disabled people, small businesses, large businesses, the farmers.
We need a voice that is offering real change and real hope for our country with a proper economic policy, rebuilding our relationship with Europe
Asked whether he would rule out a coalition, he said:
What I want to do is make sure we have as many Liberal Democrat seats and Liberal Democrat votes at the next election.
During the conference proceedings yesterday, when member were asked on a show of hands if they would approve of a Labour-Lib Dem coalition during a Q&A with Davey, only a fraction of those in the audience put their hand up, PA Media says.
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Davey said Elon Musk should be investigated to see if his company, X, has broken UK laws. In an interview yesterday Davey said Musk should be arrested over content he allows on X. In his on Today this morning interview, when asked to repeat that, Davey said Musk should be investigated by Ofcom. He said:
We think there is clear evidence that he and his company have broken the law.
Davey said, if it was shown Musk had broken the law, he should be arrested. Davey said in his view Musk has broken the law. He explained:
When he took it [X] over, he got rid of teams who were there to protect our children, who were there to enforce the rules, and what’s happened on X, and I’m afraid it really is important people understand this, we’re seeing adverts for videos of child sexual abuse.
The slight change of tone may be related to the fact that, as my colleague Pippa Crerar reported yesterday, the Lib Dems are nervous that Davey’s comments yesterday may have gone to far and exposed the Lib Dems to a libel risk.
They’ve got record profits. They’ve got profits that they never, ever thought they’d have because of the way that the monetary policy of the Bank (of England) is being reversed.
And lots of academics have looked at this and said absolutely, that’s outrageous that the banks are making such big profits.
So that wouldn’t go on to the banks’ customers.
Reform branded ‘threat to democracy’ over Farage plan to remove thousands of migrants with leave to be in UK
Good morning. Last month Reform UK unveiled its “Operation Restoring Justice” plan for the mass deportation of people living in Britain without permission to be here. It was aimed at illegal immigrants, but Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, proposed deportation on an unprecedented scale , without being clear as to quite how many people would be affected. Today he is committing Reform (which is currently well ahead of other parties in national opinion polls) to an even more draconian approach. He says Reform would abolish indefinite leave to remain – the immigration status that allows people to remain in the UK for as long as they want, often the first step towards citizenship.
Crucially, this would not just be for new applicants; it would be retrospective, applying to people who already have indefinite leave to remain. Instead, people would have to apply for a five-year visa, with tougher conditions.
In an article for the Daily Mail, Farage says this policy is intended to reverse what he calls “the Boriswave” – the huge increase in legal migration that happened when Boris Johnson was prime minister.
The Johnson government allowed the number of people getting work visas to soar largely to compensate for the fact that EU workers were leaving because of Brexit, which was the policy that Farage arguably did more than anyone else to make happen. But he does not address this point in his article.
Instead, he says:
Today, I can announce that Reform will go even further.
We will abolish indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status, which grants migrants the right to live, work and study in the UK permanently with full access to Britain’s health and benefits system.
This threatens to bankrupt our bloated welfare state.
We will rescind ILR statuses that have already been granted. We will also restore the treasured status of British citizenship.
Why is this so urgent? Starting from January 2026, if nothing is done to stop it, those 3.8 million migrants will become eligible for ILR.
Let’s be clear, these migrants are not doctors, engineers or entrepreneurs. Many of those eligible for ILR never work and never will. Many are young and old dependants who followed family members here. They are now a burden on the welfare state …
Once we abolish ILR, foreign nationals who want to work here will have 180 days to apply for a tough, new five-year renewable visa. They will have no right to benefits or healthcare without insurance. And no right to bring dependants, unless they are high earners who can afford to keep them.
We are giving British business plenty of notice that the era of cheap foreign labour is over.
In a separate article for the Daily Express, Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of government efficiency, is explicit about how this is intended to ensure hundreds of thousands of people leave the country.
These changes will lead to hundreds of thousands of people having to apply and ultimately losing their settled status in the UK, which will be done on a staggered and orderly basis to allow businesses to train British workers to replace them. Many of those who will lose their leave to remain are entirely dependent on the welfare state and will leave voluntarily upon losing access to benefits. Those that don’t will be subject to immigration enforcement as part of our mass deportation programme – Operation Restoring Justice.
Reform currently only have five MPs but, given what the polls are saying, and the breakdown of support for the traditional parties the prospect of Farage being the next PM is being taken seriously. No British government in the modern era has contemplated a deportation policy on this scale, and what Farage is proposing is close to “remigration”, something that has been taboo in mainstream UK politics since Enoch Powell was sacked from the Tory shadow cabinet after his rivers of blood speech.
The Liberal Democrats are holding their conference this week and in interviews this morning Ed Davey, their leader, said his party was best placed to defeat Reform. Branding Reform a “threat to our democracy, to things we hold dear, British values – decency, tolerance, respect for the rule of law”, he said the Lib Dems were the only party beating them in local elections.
Morning: Liberal Democrats resume their conference debates in Bournemouth. Victoria Collins, the science spokesperson, is speaking at 11.05am, Calum Miller, the foreign affairs spokesperson, at 2.40pm, and at 2.55pm there is a “Reformwatch” session with councillors. There is a fuller agenda here.
Morning: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is on a visit to Gatwick to promote the government’s plan to allow the construction of a second runway there.
11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, holds a press conference.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm BST at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
