Reform leader tells event in Scotland deporting women and children is not part of his party’s plans for the next five years
Nigel Farage has rolled back on his pledge to deport “absolutely anyone” arriving in the UK on small boats just 24 hours after making it at a combative press conference in Oxford that led to accusations of ugly and destructive rhetoric.
Farage announced plans to deport hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers in the first five years of a Reform government and to pay despotic regimes such as the Taliban to take them back. He also said: “Yes, women and children, everybody on arrival, will be detained.”
At a press conference near Edinburgh on Wednesday, however, when asked whether his comments on securing women’s safety in the UK rang hollow when he had committed to deporting women and girls back to countries where they faced oppression and sexual violence, Farage said that was not true.
At an event to introduce the MSP Graham Simpson as the latest defection from the Scottish Conservatives to Reform, Farage said: “We’re not even discussing women and children at this stage, there are so many illegal males in Britain.”
