Farage is a dangerous man. I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration to suggest that he has caused more damage to this country’s wealth and well-being than any man since Adolph Hitler. And I won’t even mention the damage to Britain’s standing in Europe, which is almost incalculable. His press conference yesterday was an absolute disgrace with echoes of Germany circa 1933. Farage - a man who could be the prime minister in three or four years - pledged to deport upwards of 600,000 immigrants using a new law which Reform UK intends to pass: the Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill. He isn’t even trying to disguise the purpose in a vague title; it’s quite explicit.
Farage, virtually single-handedly, created the immigration problem and now intends to benefit from it. Brexit has been doubly disastrous. Asylum seekers cannot now be returned under the EU’s Dublin Agreement, and the Tory post-Brexit immigration policy, with its points-based system, triggered a massive wave of legal migration, topping 1.2 million in 2023, the vast majority being non-EU. Without Farage, none of this would have happened, for sure.
Idi Amin, the president of Uganda, expelled about 50-70,000 Asians in 1972, and we condemned it out of hand. Around 28,000 ultimately settled in the UK. Now we propose doing the same to our immigrants, but ten times worse.
The BBC reported on his press conference not as the ravings of an extreme right-wing demagogue, but simply like any other policy announcement by a mainstream party. I don’t think I’ve heard anything remotely like it since Enoch Powell and his 'rivers of blood' speech in 1968, and that got him sacked. Powell wasn't even suggesting forcibly deporting anybody. He only talked of the "encouragement of re-emigration" with the help of "generous assistance."
The Overton window has now shifted so far to the right that the notion of mass deportation is greeted as perfectly normal.
We should never forget that Hitler began his Chancellorship with a similar pledge to ‘cleanse’ Germany of Jews by deporting them to other countries. The Holocaust only came later. He blamed Jews for all the nation’s problems and believed he would ‘Make Germany Great Again’ by creating Aryan purity among the population.
As late as 1940, he and his fanatical Nazis were still pursuing a plan to ship Jews rounded up in his network of concentration camps to the East African island of Madagascar. The island was French at the time, and the plan relied on France being defeated and occupied. His so-called ‘final solution’ wasn’t adopted until January 1942 at the infamous Wannsee Conference. It wasn’t called the ‘final’ solution for nothing.
I don’t suggest for one second that Farage will end up doing anything quite as heinous, but when his Operation Restoring Justice (yes, that's the plan's name) fails, as it will, you cannot imagine him simply admitting it won’t work (although he’s on record in the past saying mass deportation is politically impossible). He would be forced into ever more extreme policies and possibly a constitutional crisis when the courts block him.
And what King Charles (or William) would make of it all, I do not know.
Dominic Grieve, a former Attorney General and now co-president of the European Movement (along wth Caroline Lucas) claims the courts will block the policy even if, as Farage advocates, we leave the ECHR and the Refugee Convention. Judges could apparently apply "customary law or even the common law” to thwart the plans.
We may be fortunate in one respect. Farage will probably get no help from his friend Donald Trump. He will almost certainly be out of office when (if?) Farage is ever settled in No 10. Farage’s fortunes will inevitably be tied to Trump. If it all goes badly in the USA - as everybody expects - Farage's star will fade as quickly as it came.
I have said many times, the only long-term solution to the immigration issue is to make the countries from which these poor wretches are fleeing much more like ours. They must become liveable, peaceful democracies, and we also need to address climate change; otherwise many places will just become uninhabitable. The only body that could be used to bring these things about is the UN, which all the permanent members of the Security Council are either totally indifferent to or working actively to undermine.
It makes no sense to me/
The White House
I may have underplayed the White House as a dementia care home in my post on Saturday. The ‘cabinet meeting’ yesterday looked more like a one-man lunatic asylum where the single inmate was being humoured by his cabinet members and the press corps. They all pretended that the tsunami of deranged gibberish pouring out of Trump’s feeble brain actually made sense.
The 'meeting' lasted fully three hours with Trump making a statement, taking questions, and giving free rein to his gang of sycophants to list their achievements while praising Trump at every turn.
Trump managed to claim vaccines caused autism, talked about illegally firing a member of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy committee, and said wind farms were the reason Britain’s energy costs were ‘through the roof,’ among plenty of other unhinged stuff.
He also appeared to suggest Ukraine had a choice about getting involved in a war with Russia:
Does this idiot understand who invaded who? Trump: “I’m sure Ukraine thought it was going to win. But you’re trying to beat someone 15 times bigger than you. Biden should never have allowed this to happen.”— NOELREPORTS (@noelreports.com) 26 August 2025 at 20:41
I wonder when they will need to admit he's quite insane?
