It’s official: Reform UK has arrived. After a triumphant performance in last week’s local elections, the Right-wing populist party is now a serious force to be reckoned with. But now comes the hard part: insurgency is easy; looking like a serious, professional government-in-waiting is not. By 2029, Reform’s supporters will expect it not just to rage against the system — but to govern it.

Farage seems to understand that. He’s reportedly preparing to publish a policy paper on illegal immigration and deportations. But it has to be more than a media moment. It needs teeth. It must avoid the familiar traps that derailed every post-Brexit crackdown attempt: legal gridlock, diplomatic inertia, and political squeamishness.

So what will the plan actually look like? While the full details remain under wraps, the broad strokes are coming into focus. Once in government, Reform UK will negotiate bilateral returns agreements — not just with origin countries, but with safe third countries, too — to ensure there’s always a destination for illegal entrants, even those from unstable or war-torn states. Enforcement officers will be empowered to detain and deport illegal migrants on a regular schedule, using charter flights to get the job done.

But none of that happens without a bold first step: quitting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) — the legal superstructure that empowers activist judges, lobbyists, and lawyers to block removals. It’s the starting gun for taking back control of Britain’s borders.

On this, Reform UK’s position is unequivocal: the ECHR must go. It’s a bold stance that sets the party apart from Labour, which remains fully signed up to the Convention, and the Conservatives, who posture endlessly but never pull the trigger.

So what does leaving the ECHR actually mean? First, it means repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 — the legislation that hardwired the Convention into UK law and handed British judges sweeping powers to block deportations. British courts have enforced it with even more zeal than their continental counterparts. The result is that the Home Office has become a Potemkin ministry: all show, no sovereignty. The real decisions are made behind oak-panelled doors by activist judges.

Second, it means formally withdrawing from the Council of Europe — the institution that binds us to the European Court of Human Rights. That court doesn’t just enforce the Convention; it rewrites it, treating it as a “living document” and expanding its reach far beyond anything the public ever consented to.

But here’s the danger — for both Reform UK and the country. As politically astute as Farage is, he’s been notably circumspect about the precise mechanics of ECHR withdrawal. In his maiden speech to Parliament, he floated the idea of a referendum — instead of simply pushing for immediate withdrawal. That would be a serious misstep. A referendum wastes time, burns through political momentum, and hands the Left a golden opportunity to regroup and re-energise their base. Reform would be gambling a generational win on a needless sideshow.

The second danger is subtler but just as serious: the urge to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights, which is an idea Farage himself backed in the Daily Mail. It’s classic Westminster-bubble thinking: the belief that laws can’t simply be repealed — they must be replaced, or else civilisation will collapse into chaos.

But that’s a false premise. Britain safeguarded civil liberties for centuries through common and statute law long before the HRA existed. Scrapping it doesn’t mean stripping rights away — it means restoring a pre-1998 constitutional settlement, when the UK was arguably freer, and Parliament, not the judiciary, set the terms.

The real risk with a British Bill of Rights is that it creates yet another legal battleground. If poorly drafted — or mangled by amendments in committee — it could hand activist lawyers fresh ammunition to frustrate removals. Reform would be trading one minefield for another.

Finally, Reform UK must resist the temptation to wage diplomatic war on France. The idea of intercepting dinghies in the Channel, loading their passengers onto UK vessels, and ferrying them back to Calais has populist appeal. But France will never accept it. You can’t dump people on another country’s shore without consent. It violates national sovereignty and shreds the diplomatic rulebook.

Worse, it hands the French — and by extension, the EU — the perfect excuse to retaliate: blocking port access, ripping up trade cooperation, or tearing down key agreements like Le Touquet and the Sangatte Protocol. Those bilateral deals, for all their flaws, give Britain a vital edge: they allow our border checks to operate on French soil. Scrap them, and migrants won’t need to brave the Channel anymore. They’ll just hop on a train or ferry.

So while Reform UK’s plan to stop illegal migration has legs, there is a fatal habit in British politics of making things harder than they need to be. Often it’s done to appease hostile media or to look magnanimous to critics who won’t be won over anyway. Farage must avoid that trap. We don’t need another referendum sideshow. And we certainly don’t need to delay action in order to draft a new British Bill of Rights.

The priority is clear: scrap the Human Rights Act; close the legal loopholes that activist judges and NGOs currently exploit; and give six months’ notice to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe that the UK is withdrawing from the ECHR and the European Court of Human Rights.

After that, the operational work begins. Dormant detention centres like Haslar in Hampshire and Campsfield House in Oxfordshire must be reopened and reoccupied. Illegal arrivals must be detained and removed — not “processed” and quietly released. Meanwhile, countries that refuse to take back deported nationals will face consequences — from visa suspensions and aid cuts to taxes on remittances.

If Farage’s upcoming policy paper is competent, it could become the spine of a new immigration doctrine. Done badly, it could expose Reform as yet another party long on slogans and short on substance.

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Mike Jones is a political scientist, specialising in migration.

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