No easy solution, Nigel, and more questions than answers

Nigel Farage is like a chatbot trained on social media posts.

- JOHN RENTOUL

If it was so easy, why do these armchair gold commanders think that three prime ministers who knew that their survival depended on it have so far failed to stop the boats?

The one thing that ought to be obvious from the start is that the solution to the problem is not obvious. Therefore, the test of Farage’s proposals is whether they are creative and rigorous enough to meet and overcome the legal and logistical complexity of the challenge.

Let me explain why the Reform UK plans fail this test.

The main proposal is to detain and deport everyone who arrives by small boat, and to refuse to consider them for asylum - which is essentially what Rishi Sunak proposed and indeed legislated for, but never put into practice.

Farage’s plan has the added ingredient of disapplying a series of treaties, including the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), as proposed by Robert Jenrick. Sunak said he was prepared to do that “if necessary”, and Kemi Badenoch seems to be about to conclude that it is necessary.

But the reason Sunak never went ahead with the plan was not in the end the constraints of treaties. The next obstacle was that there is nowhere to put the detainees, and the obstacle after that is that, in most cases, there is nowhere to deport them to.