LONDON, Aug 3 (Reuters) – Britain’s right-wing Reform UK party said on Monday that if elected, it would stop asylum seekers with what it called the largest military operation in the Channel since World War Two, as it faces falling popularity and questions over its funding.
Pointing to a migration crisis in Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta, Reform leader Nigel Farage announced a tougher immigration policy that he said would see asylum seekers who arrive in small boats intercepted and returned to France.
Reform said the policy, dubbed “Operation Fortress”, would make Britain’s border impenetrable.
“Under a Reform government, within a fortnight, there would be no more boats,” Farage told reporters at a press conference.
Farage has suffered a difficult few months with his party losing its lead in national opinion polls for the first time in over a year after a series of revelations about gifts and donations to senior party figures.
Labour accused Reform of repackaging old policies on immigration to deflect attention from questions about its finances, while some experts questioned whether the party’s latest proposals were workable.
Andrew Fox, a former paratrooper and a senior associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, said the plan “sounds magnificent, provided you know nothing about ships, sailors, France or the law”.
Fox said Britain could not move warships into French territorial waters, seize boats, or disembark passengers in Calais without French permission.
“This is the gap at the centre of the policy,” he said.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham on Sunday promised “relentless” action on stopping asylum seekers after new figures showed that more than 2,000 people had arrived in Britain since he became leader two weeks ago.
(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill, editing by Andrei Khalip)
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