Farage’s Telegraph piece is not a real plan, they never are. He wraps it up in talk of “putting Britain first” but the reality is simple: tear up the post-war settlement, ditch human rights, and turn migrants into a political spectacle. When he says “the planes will take off” he’s not talking about policy detail. He’s conjuring an image of mass punishment. Migrants as cargo. Flights as theatre.
The trick is the “national emergency.” Twenty-eight thousand Channel crossings in a year. A record number of asylum claims. But compared to total migration flows, it’s small. Compared to Lebanon, Turkey or Jordan, it’s nothing. The emergency is manufactured. Close off legal routes, push people into dinghies, then scream crisis when they arrive. Farage just takes the logic further: close off the law itself.
So out come the targets. The European Convention on Human Rights, the Refugee Convention, the Anti-Torture Convention. All described as “malign influences.” He even tries to twist the Vienna Convention into a licence for mass deportations. It’s legal gibberish. But the point is not to hold up in court. It’s to make rights themselves seem like an optional extra. Something you can junk if they get in the way of the headline.
There’s a darker line running through it. Farage praises “brave parents” protesting outside a hotel in Epping, as if mob intimidation was an act of democratic renewal. In reality, the weekend protests were organised by the far-right Homeland group, and Robert Jenrick was spotted mingling with a known C18 agitator. He talks about protecting “women and girls” as though international treaties were the real danger, not austerity, not domestic violence, not cuts to services. It’s scapegoating as a strategy: pin the blame on migrants, give cover to the far right, and invite the state to follow suit.
Labour’s answer is to mock his “fantasy air bases.” But Yvette Cooper is already working on ways to limit appeals under Article 3 and Article 8 of the ECHR. Blunkett and Stringer talk openly about suspending the Convention altogether. The government boasts of 35,000 removals and a “landmark” deal with France. Farage is dragging the line further right, and Labour is shuffling along behind him.
Let’s be honest about migration. The small boats are the proverbial drop in the ocean. The real story is that Britain has a declining birthrate, an ageing population, and entire sectors of the economy that can’t function without migrant labour. The NHS, the care sector, seasonal farm work. All rely on people coming from abroad because there aren’t enough workers here. If there is a “problem,” it is not dinghies in Dover, it’s the way our economy has been wired to depend on cheap labour while pretending to be “taking back control.”
It goes much deeper. Universities now survive on the fees of foreign students. Strip that away and half the higher education system would collapse overnight. Legal migrants aren’t hiding in the shadows; they’re propping up institutions the state has starved of funding. So the honest question is not “how do we deport more people?” It’s “what do we actually want migrants to do?” At the moment the answer seems to be: staff our hospitals, care for our parents, pick our food, pay for our degrees, and then be blamed for everything else.
Which is why Farage’s whole script rings hollow. He talks about “restoring justice” by mass deportations, but never once mentions who will staff the NHS wards, pick the crops, or keep the universities open. His politics relies on pretending migration is only ever a threat, never the reality that keeps the country ticking over. The small boats make for easy headlines; the care worker from Manila or the student from Lagos doesn’t fit the story. So he erases them. What’s left is a cartoon crisis, pumped up to justify tearing down the very rights that protect us all.
If you think paperwork proves fraud, think again. The “lost passports” line gets repeated endlessly to paint asylum seekers as cheats, but it’s nonsense. People fleeing war, persecution, or trafficking don’t stroll out of their homes with neatly stamped papers. Documents get destroyed, confiscated, lost in chaos. That’s the reality. The system knows this. Caseworkers check stories, interview applicants, and look at country conditions. Claims aren’t dismissed because of missing paperwork. Yet politicians like Farage and the tabloids turn missing documents into a morality play: migrants as tricksters, the system as naive. It’s a lie dressed up as concern.
Furthermore, the credibility of an asylum claim is assessed based on the overall account provided by the claimant, not solely on the presence of documents. As noted by Richmond Chambers: “Lack of credibility is the most common reason for the refusal of an asylum claim in the UK.”
In cases where asylum seekers are granted refugee status, they are issued a Refugee Travel Document, which serves as their official travel document in place of their national passport. This indicates that the lack of a national passport does not preclude the possibility of obtaining legal status in the UK.
Yes, some lawyers do profit from the crisis. They charge eye-watering fees to navigate endlessly delayed claims, churn cases through the system, and sometimes prioritise billable hours over outcomes. It’s easy to paint them as heroes or as the last line of defence, but the truth is messier: the legal industry has learned to thrive on chaos. The system is broken, and these lawyers are both a symptom and a beneficiary. That doesn’t make migrants cheats, and it doesn’t justify Farage’s fury, but it does show how political dysfunction can create an entire economy around managing misery.
Farage’s plan is a fantasy, but the damage it does is real. The flights will never happen. Logistics, costs, international deals, none of it stacks up. But every promise of “planes taking off” shifts the ground under our feet. Rights are made to look negotiable. Human beings become problems to be managed. The mob outside a hotel is cast as the authentic voice of the people. Farage’s so-called “Operation Restoring Justice” is nothing of the sort. It’s an operation to abandon justice, and to normalise a politics where cruelty is not a by-product but the main event.
And here’s the catch: migration isn’t really the target. Farage’s logic “laws, treaties, and rights can be junked if they get in the way of priorities” could be applied anywhere. Workers’ rights? Optional. Strikes? Criminalised under “national emergency.” Courts ruling against ministers? Ignored. Social protections, environmental law, even the right to assemble peacefully. All suddenly subject to political whim. Migration is the symbol, the story that sells the fear; the real agenda is normalising a state that decides which laws, which rights, which people count. Tear up one framework, and the rest are next.
