Nigel Farage has denied that a Reform UK government would authorise lethal force against migrant crossings in the English Channel, hours after one of his MPs said the Royal Marines should be permitted to fire on the boats.
Robert Jenrick, the Reform UK MP who defected from the Conservatives, told TalkTV that the party would deploy the Royal Marines to take boats back to France.
“What we are going to do, and we’re the only political party that has the courage to say this, is deploy the Royal Marines into the Channel. If they need to use lethal force, then they’ll be able to do so,” he said.
Speaking on LBC, Farage said he would not authorise routine use of force, that it would be used only if soldiers were fired at, and that Jenrick was being “utterly misconstrued”.
“Anybody wearing British military uniform who gets fired at has the right to respond. That’s what he was saying,” Farage said, adding that shootings and stabbings take place in the camps every week.
He said the party was dealing with “very, very serious international criminal organisations”, and that a Reform UK government would, if it won the next election, pick those people up and take them back to France.
“There is a possibility that initially that might be met with some force. If it is, force will be met with force. But I tell you something: within two weeks of boats being taken back to France, the boats will stop coming,” he said.
Jenrick had said that allowing the use of force would mean the problem would end “in just a few days”. He said using force was “obviously not what we want to see happen”, adding: “We want to see these individuals picked up off the boats in a sensible and reasonable way, and taken straight back to France.”
The defence minister, Luke Pollard, called the comments “disgusting and illegal”, and said the armed forces were not allowed to accept “an illegal order”.
“We do not shoot unarmed civilians. We do not take military action against civilians,” Pollard told Times Radio. He described the idea as a “soundbite designed by Reform to distract from their sleaze and their scandal”, saying it was “abhorrent to military values, it’s abhorrent to British values”.
“I don’t think anyone should give this any truck. We can all see what this is: an attempt to distract from Reform’s internal woes,” he said.
COMMENTS