Nigel Farage Says He Would Renegotiate The Good Friday Agreement To Stop Small Boats
3 min read
A Reform UK government would look to renegotiate the Good Friday peace deal for Northern Ireland as part of its plan to stop small boat crossings, Nigel Farage has said.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Farage said he would aim to remove human rights law from the peace treaty as a way of making it easier to deport illegal migrants.
The party has been warned that its plan to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights risks disturbing the agreement that brought relative peace to Northern Ireland when it was signed in 1998.
The treaty, which ended decades of violent sectarian conflict known as The Troubles, requires the ECHR to be incorporated into Northern Ireland law. It was signed by the UK and Irish governments, with the US playing a key role in brokering the deal.
Farage said, however, that as prime minister, in time, he would be able to renegotiate the agreement.
"Can we renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement to get the ECHR out of it? Yes.
"Is that something that can happen very, very quickly? No, it will take longer," he said.
Responding to Farage, Prime Minister Keir Starmer's official spokesperson said: "The ECHR underpins key international agreements on trade, security, migration, and the Good Friday Agreement, and anyone who is proposing to renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement is not serious."
Farage spoke alongside Reform chairman Zia Yusuf at an aircraft storage unit in Oxfordshire as the pair set out how a government led by Reform would tackle illegal migration.
The Reform leader said he would leave the ECHR, repeal the Human Rights Act and disapply a series of international treaties to make deporting failed asylum seekers easier.
He said that while women and children who arrive illegally would be detained upon arrival under his plans, deporting children would be "much more complicated".
"Women and children, everybody on arrival will be detained, and I’ve accepted already that how we deal with children is a much more complicated and difficult issue.
“But the people protesting outside the Bell Hotel and at 30 migrant hotels on Saturday around the country weren’t doing it because of the few children coming.
“They were doing it because over three-quarters of those that come are young undocumented males who come from cultures that are entirely different from ours, who are very unlikely to assimilate into our community, who pose a risk to women and girls, and some of them, I’m afraid, pose a risk to national security.”
Farage said he feared “anger will grow” across the country if this issue is not resolved, and warned that there was a “genuine threat” to public order.
The MP for Clacton said that a Reform government would make exceptions for migrants who have helped the British armed forces, like those who supported the UK in Afghanistan.
“There were brave Afghans who supported the British forces and American forces during that 20-year war, who, of course, absolutely of course, deserve recompense for the enormous risks they took," the Reform leader said this morning.
“This country has taken half a million refugees since the Brexit referendum. This country is not closed-minded to groups that genuinely face persecution, to groups that genuinely are refugees.”
Additional reporting by Matilda Martin.
