Reform UK's pledge to use Navy to stop small boats criticised ahead of press conference

Good morning and welcome to our coverage of UK politics. Reform UK is today pledging to use the Royal Navy to stop small boat crossings if the party wins the next general election.

The boats in the channel would be intercepted by the Navy and returned to France or Belgium under a plan called “operation fortress”.

The party proposes to set up a joint military command with units from the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, RAF and British army as well as a surveillance command to track incoming boats.

Similar proposals have been suggested by the Conservatives before, but never materialised due to concerns around legality and the potential flouting of international treaties.

Last Wednesday was the busiest day for small boat crossings across the Channel so far this year, with 752 people arriving in the UK, as the Guardian’s political correspondent, Alexandra Topping, notes in this story.

But official provisional figures indicate that 14,526 have entered the UK so far in 2026, 43% lower than the number recorded by this time last year (25,436) and down 14% on the same period in 2024 (16,903).

In reaction to Reform’s pledge, a Labour party spokesperson said Nigel Farage’s party “have reheated an old announcement in their latest desperate bid to distract from their growing sleaze scandals”.

Retired Royal Navy commander Tom Sharpe, meanwhile, suggested the proposal “lacks quite a lot of substance”. “We have the border force already to do this,” he told the BBC’s Today programme.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is losing support to Restore Britain. Photograph: James Veysey/Shutterstock

Farage is fighting a byelection after resigning his seat of Clacton in an attempt to shake off a deepening donations scandal, given charge by a revelation from the Guardian’s City editor, Anna Issac, that he had failed to declare a £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

All other mainstream parties have declined to stand a candidate against him, making a mockery of what Farage tried to frame as a “people versus the establishment” byelection. Farage is set to comfortably win the contest – but has gifted the political stage to the new government who have announced a raft of policies and been on a media blitz over recent weeks.

Reform UK’s increasingly hard-right policies and rhetoric come as it loses support to Restore Britain, a breakaway party even further to the right which is led by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe.

Lowe has been a thorn in Farage’s side since he was stripped of the Reform party whip last year after being accused of bullying and making alleged threats against the then party chair, Zia Yusuf, claims that he denies.

In a surprise move over the weekend, Lowe extended an olive branch to Farage, offering him a deal to unite the so-called “patriotic right” of British politics, as Andy Burnham improves Labour’s polling and aims to win back some of the same voters Reform UK is targeting.

In a statement not explicitly mentioning the offer from Restore or Rupert Lowe’s name, Farage said he recognised the need to accept support from other parties and said Reform has “always been open to anyone”.

Farage will appear at a press conference in Westminster alongside Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesperson, from 11am. He will likely be asked about the potential Reform-Restore pact, his Royal Navy policy and his finances.

Key events

Speaking to Sky News, Zia Yusuf expressed disappointment in Reform UK’s performance in both the Manchester mayoral election and the Makerfield parliamentary election.

The party’s home affairs spokesperson said:

double quotation markWe have had a few election results that have been disappointing. And we acknowledge that. We look at that. We want to keep learning and we want to keep listening to voters and making sure that we’re making the case for why we need a Reform government.

The political saliency of the UK’s policies around illegal migration has risen since tens of thousands of people from Morocco crossed in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta last week, causing dozens of people to die (including by drowning or being crushed) and triggered a political crisis for Madrid. Spanish officials have subsequently said that almost all those who reached Ceuta on Thursday have since returned.

Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, said his party’s small boats plan was partly inspired by what he saw in Ceuta. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning:

double quotation markI saw soldiers using pepper spray into interacting directly with migrants that were acting in a disorderly fashion.

And in using the military, what I saw was Spain was able to remove, effectively send back, what looked like north of 40,000 illegal migrants in the space of a day.

Former Royal Naval Cmdr Tom Sharpe cast doubt over the feasibility of Reform’s proposal.

“When you start looking at what ships we have, which is basically none – I mean, he’s talking about the largest maritime operation in the Channel since World War Two, a very evocative image, but that’s not the reality,” Sharpe told the Today programme.

“We don’t have the ships,” he said, adding that using warships might be a waste of resources, if their anti-air and anti-submarine capabilities were better suited to other scenarios.

He said Border Force is already set up to intercept people trying to reach Britain, and warned that Paris could end up refusing to accept migrants being taken to French shores by the Royal Navy.

Responding to the scenario, Yusuf said it would be a “crime against humanity” not to let them disembark. He added that given migrants have died crossing the English Channel, the boats would be “full of innocent civilians who are being rescued as part of a humanitarian mission”.

The leader of Restore Britain, Rupert Lowe, told the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, that if he was “prepared to work together around serious policies, serious reform and serious government, then so are we”.

In a video posted on X on Sunday, Lowe said:

double quotation markI truly believe there could be sufficient common ground for our two movements to cooperate collectively, destroy the looming leftwing alliance that will finish off what hope remains for this country.

In my view, failing to even try because of our own personal difficulties is simply not an option. Now is the time to put our differences aside and cooperate for the good of the country that we all love.

The offer comes after Restore Britain placed fourth in the Greater Manchester mayoral byelection, where its candidate, Marlon West, took 8.7% of the vote. Reform’s Sian Astley came second on 21%, behind Labour’s Andy Burnham’s successor, Bev Craig.

Lowe asked Farage to put “personalities and our past disagreements aside” and he set five conditions for cooperation:

• Mass deportation of illegal migrants “including women and children”.

• Tougher rules on legal migration, a ban on halal and kosher slaughter, the burqa, cousin marriage and sharia courts.

• A referendum on the death penalty.

• Welfare cuts to fund “self-sufficiency”.

• The exclusion of former Tory ministers from any future cabinet.

“Mass deportations must become a political inevitability,” he said. “They must all go.”

Good morning and welcome to our coverage of UK politics. Reform UK is today pledging to use the Royal Navy to stop small boat crossings if the party wins the next general election.

The boats in the channel would be intercepted by the Navy and returned to France or Belgium under a plan called “operation fortress”.

The party proposes to set up a joint military command with units from the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, RAF and British army as well as a surveillance command to track incoming boats.

Similar proposals have been suggested by the Conservatives before, but never materialised due to concerns around legality and the potential flouting of international treaties.

Last Wednesday was the busiest day for small boat crossings across the Channel so far this year, with 752 people arriving in the UK, as the Guardian’s political correspondent, Alexandra Topping, notes in this story.

But official provisional figures indicate that 14,526 have entered the UK so far in 2026, 43% lower than the number recorded by this time last year (25,436) and down 14% on the same period in 2024 (16,903).

In reaction to Reform’s pledge, a Labour party spokesperson said Nigel Farage’s party “have reheated an old announcement in their latest desperate bid to distract from their growing sleaze scandals”.

Retired Royal Navy commander Tom Sharpe, meanwhile, suggested the proposal “lacks quite a lot of substance”. “We have the border force already to do this,” he told the BBC’s Today programme.

Farage is fighting a byelection after resigning his seat of Clacton in an attempt to shake off a deepening donations scandal, given charge by a revelation from the Guardian’s City editor, Anna Issac, that he had failed to declare a £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

All other mainstream parties have declined to stand a candidate against him, making a mockery of what Farage tried to frame as a “people versus the establishment” byelection. Farage is set to comfortably win the contest – but has gifted the political stage to the new government who have announced a raft of policies and been on a media blitz over recent weeks.

Reform UK’s increasingly hard-right policies and rhetoric come as it loses support to Restore Britain, a breakaway party even further to the right which is led by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe.

Lowe has been a thorn in Farage’s side since he was stripped of the Reform party whip last year after being accused of bullying and making alleged threats against the then party chair, Zia Yusuf, claims that he denies.

In a surprise move over the weekend, Lowe extended an olive branch to Farage, offering him a deal to unite the so-called “patriotic right” of British politics, as Andy Burnham improves Labour’s polling and aims to win back some of the same voters Reform UK is targeting.

In a statement not explicitly mentioning the offer from Restore or Rupert Lowe’s name, Farage said he recognised the need to accept support from other parties and said Reform has “always been open to anyone”.

Farage will appear at a press conference in Westminster alongside Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesperson, from 11am. He will likely be asked about the potential Reform-Restore pact, his Royal Navy policy and his finances.