Maybe, as some have suggested, the proposal by Reform
Ltd to site internment camps for migrants in constituencies which vote for the
Green Party is just a wind-up, an attempt to provoke outrage. Maybe, maybe not.
There’s certainly something very Trumpian about it, aping the way violent
immigration enforcement is used differentially in the US depending on whether a
particular state did or did not vote for Trump. Some have suggested that it
might be illegal, but if the UK ever got to the stage of electing a majority Reform
Ltd government, such a government would have no trouble legislating to remove
any legal obstacles. There is certainly something very ‘un-British’ about it,
curiously enough from an overtly British/English nationalist party.
Perhaps we’ll never get there. After all, the ability
of Reform UK to actually implement such a policy depends on a party led by
Farage not imploding for another three years, and then winning a majority of
seats in the Westminster parliament. History suggests that the former is
unlikely, and the latter depends on the former, but we shouldn’t be complacent.
I suspect that they actually mean what they say. Whether they would be able, as
they claim, to hold detainees for only a short time before deporting them is an
open question. It sounds simple, but in practical terms I suspect that people
would need to be held for months rather than weeks, and the total number of
detainees at any one time would be very much higher than they are claiming as a
result.
Leaving aside the questions of both practicality and probability, the logic, even on their own terms, is a little ‘fuzzy’ to say the least. Setting up the camps is presented as a consequence of voting for open borders, and therefore something which those who vote for open borders should welcome, but that’s a complete logical reversal. Setting up camps is actually a consequence of voting for closed borders and a mass deportation policy; those who should welcome the camps are those who vote to set them up (Reform Ltd voters), not those who vote against them. On the other hand, and they probably haven’t worked this through themselves yet, they’ve actually given us a clear way of stopping their deportation policy in its tracks. They have guaranteed that no Reform Ltd-voting constituency will get a camp, so if every constituency elects a Reform Ltd MP, there would be nowhere to site a single camp. It’s not an action I’d encourage, of course – but ‘Vote Reform to stop Reform’ has a certain ring to it. Logic, like arithmetic, isn't exactly one of their strengths.
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