Amnesty International says Farage putting ‘hate and inhumanity’ before leadership with El Salvador prison plan– UK politics live

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Farage welcomes revived police probe into alleged arson attack at his home after Widdecombe murder

Q: [From Jack Elsom from the Sun] Can you tell us anything more about the Ann Widdecombe investigation to cover an arson attack at your home?

That was a reference to this story.

Farage replied:

double quotation markShortly before the horrific murder of Ann Widdecombe, I did publicly say something I hadn’t said for a year, which was about an incident that occurred at my home address. The issue was basically arson, and the attempted forcing of the door. I hadn’t mentioned it for a year, because I generally don’t mention in public the security concerns that I have, because there have been too many of them that have happened. I spoke about this in the context of me needing to be provided with security clearly to the end of my days. Ann, 78, been out of office for many, many years. And I discussed that around the issue of money, of my own future protection. Of course, most of the media organisations in this room called me a liar.

This is a very partial account of what happened earlier this year. Farage did say, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, that there had been an arson attack on his home which he had not revealed before. You would find it very hard to find any mainstream media organisation that called him a liar. But journalists (including from the Guardian) pointed out that he had had given this interview as a “spoiler” because it came when he knew the Guardian was about to publish the story about how he had received an undisclosed £5m donation from the cryptobillionaire Christopher Harborne, and Farage told the Telegraph about the donation and said that it was wholly unrelated to his political work and that it was just a gift to fund his security for the rest of his life (which is why he mentioned the arson attack). Some people are very sceptical about this explanation – particularly in the light of stories like this. Doubts were also raised about the arson story after the Observer reported that, while the police recorded an attempted burglary at Farage’s home, they did not record an arson attack.

In his answer at the press conference, Farage went on:

double quotation markThe truth is, there was an investigation into this. And clearly counter-terrorism [police] made some mistakes, which is why they referred themselves to the Independent Office of Police Complaints. I understand this is a completely unprecedented move. And, yes, this is directly linked to the murder of Ann Widdecombe. And I’m afraid I just can’t tell you any more than that at this stage. It’s a great, great tragedy that it took the death of Ann for the security services in Britain to finally take seriously the safety and security of Reform politicians and reform prominent figures. Up until that moment, we had been treated very differently to everybody else. For example, four days after the murder of Charlie Kirk, I had nearly all of my security removed from me. We have been ignored. Our situation has been undervalued. But I’m not going to say anything now to prejudice [the investigation], because I do actually believe in my heart that counter-terrorism are now seriously doing this job, and I have confidence in them. I’d love to tell you more. It will come out, but I just dare not breach that trust and confidence with counter-terrorism at this stage.

The police have yet to confirm any such link between Widdecombe’s murder and the alleged firebombing of Farage’s home. Police did not identify any suspects during their investigation of the incident at the time, which was treated as an attempted burglary, and so the investigation was closed, pending any new lines of inquiry.

Since the case was reopened, CTP London said it had identified a line of inquiry “which may have been relevant” but was “not identified and pursued by [counter-terrorism police] at the time”.

The police watchdog said it was now investigating the conduct of a CTP London staff member over allegations that they “failed to identify and pursue a line of inquiry”.

Amnesty International UK has condemned Reform UK’s proposal to send foreign prisoners to serve the rest of their sentences in El Salvador. In a statement on the policy announced at a press conference this morning (see 9.35am), Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, said:

\n Reform is proposing to contract into serious human rights abuses in El Salvador to enable the transfer of people convicted in the UK into an extremely overcrowded and abusive prison system overseas – financing brutality with British taxpayers’ money.\n Amnesty has documented mass arbitrary detention, beatings, torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearances, denial of medical care and deaths in custody in El Salvador. People have been cut off from their families and effectively disappeared into detention, while relatives have been left searching prisons, courts and even morgues for answers.\n This proposal is a further extension of a wider politics that has moved dangerously far from any sense of what is practical, legal or constitutes basic human decency. We have already seen with the Rwanda scheme how policies once considered unthinkable can be pushed dangerously far when politicians choose headlines and hostility over real solutions to human needs.\n Too many politicians seem incapable of any real leadership – whether at home or internationally – preferring to agitate hate, violence and inhumanity that makes all of us less safe. This latest proposal from Reform provides a stark example of that.\n

Downing Street says the arrival of a record 230 people in the UK on a single ‘mega-dinghy’ crossing the Channel has highlighted the “ruthless” tactics being used by people smugglers.

Asked about the incident at the No 10 lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said:

\n We’ve seen today some appalling images of young babies being put into these unseaworthy craft, and they’re shocking images, and they show the reality behind the ruthless smuggling gangs that are prepared to risk human lives for profit.\n That’s exactly why the government has signed a new payment-by-results deal with the French to prevent these perilous journeys from happening in the first place.\n

The government was “not complacent”, the spokesperson said. But he said joint action taken with the French since the general election had prevented 47,000 crossings.

A dinghy carrying a record 230 people has arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel in the early hours of Monday, Diane Taylor reports.

The Scottish Rape Crisis Alliance (SRCA) has condemned a Green MSP over their comments about the “demonisation of rape”, the Press Association reports. PA says:

\n Q Manivannan was also rebuked for saying rape exists on a “spectrum”.\n In an open letter, the alliance, which represents four rape crisis centres in Scotland, said there was “no hierarchy of rape” and warned the MSP not to “minimise” sexual violence.\n Manivannan has faced backlash from Scotland’s children’s minister, as well as Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.\n The comments from Manivannan, made during The Subjective Space podcast last year, sparked fury after they re-emerged online at the weekend.\n During the nearly hour-long exchange, Manivannan, a non-binary MSP who uses they/them pronouns, said there was a “demonisation of rape”.\n “It is a spectrum,” they added, “none of which is any worse or less or more worse, but it is a spectrum of things that constitute that one homogenised word, rape.”\n Manivannan also said there were “different modes” of consent and rape.\n The MSP went on to say that the idea of a rapist being a “big, big, burly man” was “not necessarily unfounded” but said it was “misconstrued” because “any individual is capable” of rape.\n The SRCA said it “fundamentally rejects the suggestion that society is demonising rape”.\n The alliance said: “We do not need to exaggerate its seriousness. We do not need to turn perpetrators into mythical monsters.\n “But neither should we be afraid to say plainly that rape is horrific, that it causes profound trauma and harm, and that responsibility for that harm belongs with the person who chose to violate another person.”\n

At his press conference Nigel Farage claimed that voters who support Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party, which is even more rightwing and anti-immigrant than Reform UK, would be “horrified” by some of the people around Lowe.

Farage said some Lowe’s close allies were antisemitic. People like that would have to be “out of the inner circle” before Reform UK would hold talks with Restore Britain about cooperating, he said.

He said:

\n I suspect many of those who say Restore in answer to a poll are perhaps not quite aware [of what people in the party are like]. They see Rupert, they see this farmer from Gloucestershire, and they think he makes sense. But those he’s got around him – I think they’d be pretty horrified too [by their views].\n

Last week Lowe said the two parties should work together. As Ben Quinn explained in an analysis at the time, the prospects of Farage and Lowe cooperating are slight. But without some sort of deal, the hard right vote is split.

At his press conference, asked about an early election, Nigel Farage said he thought an election this year was “very unlikely”.

But he did think an election in 2027 was probable, he said. He said that national debt was rising faster than in any other country apart from Botswana (a figure based on a 25-year timetable) and he claimed there was a risk of a debt crisis. He went on:

He went:

\n I’m not willing this. I don’t want us to have a debt market crisis. But I believe the likelihood of it increases with every single day that goes by. So I still believe an election next year is more than likely.\n

Downing Street has said it is “not possible” to exempt “one or two offenders” convicted of manslaughter from early release amid pressure over the eligibility of PC Andrew Harper’s killers to be freed from prison from January, the Press Association reports. (See 9.35am.) PA says:

\n No 10 insisted Andy Burnham is “far from accepting the situation” but appeared to play down the prospect of an imminent carve-out to keep Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers behind bars.\n Some 5,000 people are expected to be released early under sentencing changes, down from 6,000 after the exemptions announced as part of an urgent review of the scheme.\n Under current plans, Cole and Bowers remain eligible to be freed halfway through their 13-year sentences after they were convicted of manslaughter in 2020 following PC Harper’s death in 2019.\n More than 880,000 people have signed a petition calling for them to remain in jail, with a government source telling The Daily Telegraph on Friday the prime minister is prepared to “explore every option” to block their early release.\n Asked whether this was correct at the lobby briefing this morning, the PM’s spokesperson said manslaughter of an emergency worker was “not a standalone offence” and it was “not possible to simply exclude one or two offenders” within the wider category of manslaughter.\n Asked whether ministers were accepting the situation as it stands, the spokesperson said: “I think you’ve seen from the prime minister’s words that he’s far from accepting the situation and as he wrote last week he wants to go even further.\n “He’s pushed hard on what more we could do and his focus now is on fixing the prison system long term to avoid a repeat of this prison crisis so that it never happens again.”\n Pressed on whether the prime minister was admitting there was nothing more he could do, the official said: “He understands the public wants him to go further, and he wanted to go further, but on the wider issue that prisons would have run out of space, police would stop making arrests, it would be impossible to lock up convicted offenders and that would put public safety at untold risk.”\n

Q: [From LBC’s Natasha Clark] You say prisoners should serve full sentences. Does that mean you don’t believe in rehabilitation?

Yusuf said:

\n What we’re saying very clearly is that those who kill people, those who rape, violent thugs, will not be allowed out of jail a day early under a Reform government.\n

And Farage said he did believe in rehabilitation. But 1% of criminals were responsible for a large amount of crime, and protecting the public took precedence over rehabilitating them.

Q: Do you have confidence in the police?

Farage replied:

\n This is a very difficult question to answer because I want to be on the side of the police. Of course I do. Instinctively, I want to be on the side of the police. I think I’ve made it clear already.\n But, up until this moment in time, I think this political party and its senior figures have been treated with contempt by many organisations of the state, not just the police force or the counter-terrorism unit within it.\n

Farage also said that the fact that counter-terrorism police have referred themselves to the Independent Office for Police Conduct over the original investigation into the alleged arson attack at his home showed they were “obviously very, very scared of what the truth is when it comes out”.

But it also showed they were not trying to cover it up, he said.

Q: [From Rob Powell from Sky News] You mentioned the record number of arrivals on a single boat. (See 10.33am.) But isn’t it the case that people are having to use bigger boats because the smaller boats keep getting seized? The numbers are coming down.

Farage said he always said the people smugglers were going to start using bigger boats.

And he said, while overall numbers were down, they were still “horrendous”.

UPDATE: Farage said:

\n I’ve always thought the boats would get bigger – I’ve always thought they would.\n And we were pretty shocked the other day. Do you remember 173? That was about two weeks ago if I remember rightly.\n We were shocked at 173. Well, we’re already up by another 25%.\n And yes, the overall numbers this year are down but they’re still horrendous …\n Yes, we have managed to stop some of the dinghies but it doesn’t stop the problem – it doesn’t go away.\n It is still something that is completely out of control.\n

Q: [From Jack Elsom from the Sun] Can you tell us anything more about the Ann Widdecombe investigation to cover an arson attack at your home?

That was a reference to this story.

Farage replied:

\n Shortly before the horrific murder of Ann Widdecombe, I did publicly say something I hadn’t said for a year, which was about an incident that occurred at my home address. The issue was basically arson, and the attempted forcing of the door.\n I hadn’t mentioned it for a year, because I generally don’t mention in public the security concerns that I have, because there have been too many of them that have happened.\n I spoke about this in the context of me needing to be provided with security clearly to the end of my days.\n Ann, 78, been out of office for many, many years. And I discussed that around the issue of money, of my own future protection.\n Of course, most of the media organisations in this room called me a liar.\n

This is a very partial account of what happened earlier this year. Farage did say, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, that there had been an arson attack on his home which he had not revealed before. You would find it very hard to find any mainstream media organisation that called him a liar. But journalists (including from the Guardian) pointed out that he had had given this interview as a “spoiler” because it came when he knew the Guardian was about to publish the story about how he had received an undisclosed £5m donation from the cryptobillionaire Christopher Harborne, and Farage told the Telegraph about the donation and said that it was wholly unrelated to his political work and that it was just a gift to fund his security for the rest of his life (which is why he mentioned the arson attack). Some people are very sceptical about this explanation – particularly in the light of stories like this. Doubts were also raised about the arson story after the Observer reported that, while the police recorded an attempted burglary at Farage’s home, they did not record an arson attack.

In his answer at the press conference, Farage went on:

\n The truth is, there was an investigation into this.\n And clearly counter-terrorism [police] made some mistakes, which is why they referred themselves to the Independent Office of Police Complaints.\n I understand this is a completely unprecedented move.\n And, yes, this is directly linked to the murder of Ann Widdecombe.\n And I’m afraid I just can’t tell you any more than that at this stage.\n It’s a great, great tragedy that it took the death of Ann for the security services in Britain to finally take seriously the safety and security of Reform politicians and reform prominent figures.\n Up until that moment, we had been treated very differently to everybody else. For example, four days after the murder of Charlie Kirk, I had nearly all of my security removed from me. We have been ignored. Our situation has been undervalued.\n But I’m not going to say anything now to prejudice [the investigation], because I do actually believe in my heart that counter-terrorism are now seriously doing this job, and I have confidence in them.\n I’d love to tell you more. It will come out, but I just dare not breach that trust and confidence with counter-terrorism at this stage.\n

The police have yet to confirm any such link between Widdecombe’s murder and the alleged firebombing of Farage’s home. Police did not identify any suspects during their investigation of the incident at the time, which was treated as an attempted burglary, and so the investigation was closed, pending any new lines of inquiry.

Since the case was reopened, CTP London said it had identified a line of inquiry “which may have been relevant” but was “not identified and pursued by [counter-terrorism police] at the time”.

The police watchdog said it was now investigating the conduct of a CTP London staff member over allegations that they “failed to identify and pursue a line of inquiry”.

Farage and Yusuf are now taking questions.

Q: [From Jack Fenwick from the BBC] Are there other countries where you might send foreign offenders? And how much would this cost?

Farage said that some Baltic countries could house foreign prisoners from the UK, like Lithuania and Estonia. But El Salvador had “the most capacity”, he said.

And he claimed building Nightingale prisons (quick, cheap prisons – so-called after the Nightingale hospitals concept) would be “pretty cheap”.

He went on:

\n We have to admit that there might not be too many colour TVs.\n

And, referring to the jails in El Salvador, Yusuf said:

\n It’s not going to be a summer camp. It’s not going to be particularly fun. But it won’t be cruel and it won’t be unreasonable.\n

Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, is speaking at the press conference now.

He claims that a combination of sending foreign prisoners to serve their sentences in jails abroad, and building “Nightingale prisons”, could create an extra 22,000 jail spaces.

\n We will rapidly build capacity. We will take advantage of new prefabricated modular technology and build 12,000 prison places in the form of Nightingale prisons on Ministry of Defence land. And the army will be called in to assist.\n Together, these measures will create an additional 22,000 prison places compared to Andy Burnham’s plans.\n

Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs chief economist who served as a Treasury minister in David Cameron’s government, is resisting taking a job with Andy Burnham’s government because he is worried about the PM’s interest in wealth taxes, the Times is reporting.

O’Neill was brought up near Manchester and, like Burnham, he is a strong supporter of devolving economic power to the regions. Having O’Neill in government would do a lot to reassure the City about the government’s fiscal responsibility. But, in his story, Steven Swinford reports:

\n The Times has been told that Lord O’Neill of Gatley, a former Goldman Sachs economist and Treasury minister, has been offered significant ministerial and advisory roles but has yet to reach an agreement with No 10.\n He is said to be concerned about putting his business interests, which include a science and technology investment company along with extensive shareholdings in banks, venture capital companies and private equity ventures, into a blind trust.\n A Whitehall source familiar with the talks said O’Neill also had concerns about policy disagreements over issues such as potential wealth taxes, which have been advocated by some of Burnham’s other close allies.\n

Downing Street is likely to be asked about the story at the lobby briefing later.

With parts of Britain set to experience their fifth heatwave of the summer this week, Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has accused the government of not recognising the severity of the crisis.

In a statement, he said:

\n We are now facing the fifth heatwave in months following the recent deaths of 3,000 people in our country from extreme weather conditions.\n This is the greatest crisis this country has faced since the second world war and to complacently dismiss the demands for immediate action by saying everything is under control is gross negligence, blatantly untrue and misses the severity of the crisis.\n Only days after dedicated public servants talked about the need for urgent action, backed up by indisputable science, to secure our food supplies and the health of the most vulnerable, the Labour government says it’s all in hand, and supply chains are resilient.\n

At a press conference last week, Polanski said the government should be responding with emergency measures now.

Andy Burnham has promised a series of measures to tackle the cost of living, including a ban on fake discounts and making it easier for people to escape unwanted subscriptions, Aletha Adu reports.

Burnham has written about his plans in an article for the Guardian.

These two announcements are extensions of measures already in the pipeline under Keir Starmer.

The opposition parties are not impressed. For the Tories, shadow chancellor Mel Stride said:

\n Andy Burnham has already run out of ideas.\n The cost of living didn’t become a problem last week, so you have to ask why it has taken Labour so long to enact legislation passed by the previous government.\n

Stride was referring to the fact that the new rules making it easier to cancel subscriptions involve implementing measures originally in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 passed when the Tories were in office.

And, for the Lib Dems, Daisy Cooper, the deputy leader and shadow Treasury spokesperson, said:

\n We Liberal Democrats have long called for stronger consumer protections and we want to see the government go further.\n If the new PM is serious about this, he should introduce strengthened protections against rogue traders, make energy bills fairer by giving everyone a discount on their essential usage, and clamp down on the big supermarkets’ unfair shrinkflation tactics.\n

Good morning. Andy Burnham has said Middlemarch is his favourite novel, but he may not remember George Eliot’s line about the genial businessman Mr Vincy who “blustering as he was, had as little of his own way as if he had been a prime minister”. Burnham only took over in No 10 three weeks ago today. But already he is learning that Eliot had a point about the constraints of office.

As PM, Burnham became responsible for the prisoner early release scheme due to come into force in September, which is hugely controversial because it will lead to killers, rapists and sex offenders being released early. Burnham immediately said he was “pausing” the scheme pending a rethink, and early last week he announced he was changing the rules to make the scheme more restrictive. Explaining the move in an article for the Daily Telegraph, Burnham said that he “wanted to go even further” but that the plan he was announcing “pushed to the very limits of what is possible to do.” He added: “I know I can look people in the eye and say to them there is nothing more I could have asked for without risking the prison system reaching capacity and collapsing within months.”

But if he thought that would quell public and media anger about the plan, he was wrong. The new rules won’t affect two of the killers of PC Andrew Harper, who will still get early release under the scheme, and Burnham is now reportedly considering a further crackdown to ensure they are included (which, if it goes ahead, would undermine the ‘nothing more he could do’ claim in the Telegraph last week). Even if Burnham manages to exempt the Harper killers, it won’t be long before media organisations start focusing on other emotive stories about criminals being released early. The Daily Express has an example this morning.

And this morning the Daily Mail has opened up another line of attack on the policy, highlighting Tory claims that the early release scheme will lead to “around 500 added sex offences, nearly 1,800 violent crimes and just under 36,000 thefts before the end of this parliament in 2029”. The Ministry of Justice has dismissed the report as “highly speculative” and based on “an inaccurate method of calculating the impact of sentencing reforms”. It says: “Without [the early release scheme], we risk prisons reaching capacity and collapsing. If that happened, police could not make arrests, courts could not remand offenders and there would be unchecked criminality on our streets.”

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is now leaping in with his own alleged solution. Reform says it will free up space in jails in England and Wales by rapidly deporting all foreign offenders “to serve their sentences in countries like El Salvador and Kosovo”. In a post on social media, Farage is highlighting a Sun story saying “following initial conversations with the El Salvador government about renting prison spots, party chairman Lee Anderson will lead a team of officials for a visit later this year”. Farage is also proposing building “Nightingale prisons” to create extra spaces. He will be giving more details at a press conference later with Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesperson.

In their London Playbook briefing for Politico, Dan Bloom and Megan McElroy highlight some of the obvious problems with this.

\n Yusuf [says] Reform will deport “all 10,000 foreign nationals from our prisons.” Of the 10,134 foreign nationals in custody in England and Wales, nearly a third are on remand, i.e. they haven’t been convicted of a crime yet. A Reform official confirmed foreign nationals will only come in scope of the party’s scheme if and when they’re convicted. Then there are questions about what’d happen after inmates in Kosovo finish their sentence (Reform would put a lifetime ban on returning to the U.K.). Or matters like El Salvador’s human rights record — though Playbook can imagine how Farage will respond to that one.\n

Commenting on the Reform proposals, a Labour spokesperson said:

\n Keeping the public safe is and always will be Labour’s first priority. The government has already made clear we are working at pace to deport foreign criminals and we’re building more prison places to deliver justice for victims and keep criminals behind bars.\n Reform have no serious answers to the Tory prisons crisis and would lead the system to collapse. This would result in a free for all for dangerous and violent offenders, including murderers and rapists. Nigel Farage and Reform simply can’t be trusted to keep Britain safe.\n

Burnham is back from holiday this week, and is due to start a summer tour of Britain soon. But we have not been told to expect him out today.

So there are only two items on the agenda.

11am: Farage and Yusuf hold their press conference.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

As I explained earlier this month, we are no longer going to have comments open below the line on this blog. From today, if you want to contact me, or anyone else writing the blog when I am not here, please email politics.live@theguardian.com. You can use this to flag up corrections, comments for publication, questions or complaints. There is a longer post here about how we hope this will work.

Key events

• 36m agoAmnesty International says Farage putting 'hate and inhumanity' before leadership with El Salvador prison plan
• 50m agoNo 10 says arrival of 230 people on 'mega-dinghy' highlights 'ruthless' tactics used by people-smuggling gangs
• 1h agoRecord 230 people cross Channel to UK as smugglers turn to ‘mega-dinghies’
• 1h agoRape crisis centres condemn Green MSP's rape 'spectrum' comment
• 1h agoFarage says Restore Britain supporters would be 'horrified' by antisemitism of some of those in Rupert Lowe's 'inner circle'
• 2h agoFarage claims election in 2027 'more than likely' because of risk of debt crisis
• 2h agoNo 10 plays down prospect of further changes to prisoner early release scheme to exempt killers of PC Harper
• 2h agoFarage claims police 'very scared' of what inquiry into how they originally investigated alleged arson attack may show
• 3h agoFarage says, although small boat arrival numbers coming down, they are still 'horrendous'
• 3h agoFarage welcomes revived police probe into alleged arson attack at his home after Widdecombe murder
• 4h agoYusuf claims El Salvador jails for foreign prisoners from UK won't be 'fun', but 'won't be cruel'
• 4h agoZia Yusuf claims Reform UK could create 22,000 jail places by sending offenders abroad and building Nightingale prisons
• 4h agoEconomist and ex-minister Jim O'Neill reportedly resisting No 10 job offers partly over wealth tax concerns
• 5h agoGreen leader Zack Polanski accuses government of 'gross negligence' over climate crisis
• 5h agoBurnham vows crackdown on ‘rip-off’ business practices to ease cost of living - as Tories claim he's 'run out of ideas'
• 5h agoLabour says Farage has 'no serious answers' to prisons crisis, as Reform UK proposes jailing foreign offenders in El Salvador

Amnesty International says Farage putting 'hate and inhumanity' before leadership with El Salvador prison plan

Amnesty International UK has condemned Reform UK’s proposal to send foreign prisoners to serve the rest of their sentences in El Salvador. In a statement on the policy announced at a press conference this morning (see 9.35am), Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, said:

double quotation markReform is proposing to contract into serious human rights abuses in El Salvador to enable the transfer of people convicted in the UK into an extremely overcrowded and abusive prison system overseas – financing brutality with British taxpayers’ money. Amnesty has documented mass arbitrary detention, beatings, torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearances, denial of medical care and deaths in custody in El Salvador. People have been cut off from their families and effectively disappeared into detention, while relatives have been left searching prisons, courts and even morgues for answers. This proposal is a further extension of a wider politics that has moved dangerously far from any sense of what is practical, legal or constitutes basic human decency. We have already seen with the Rwanda scheme how policies once considered unthinkable can be pushed dangerously far when politicians choose headlines and hostility over real solutions to human needs. Too many politicians seem incapable of any real leadership – whether at home or internationally – preferring to agitate hate, violence and inhumanity that makes all of us less safe. This latest proposal from Reform provides a stark example of that.

Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf speaking at their press conference this morning at the Royal Horseguards Hotel. Photograph: James Manning/PA

No 10 says arrival of 230 people on 'mega-dinghy' highlights 'ruthless' tactics used by people-smuggling gangs

Downing Street says the arrival of a record 230 people in the UK on a single ‘mega-dinghy’ crossing the Channel has highlighted the “ruthless” tactics being used by people smugglers.

Asked about the incident at the No 10 lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said:

double quotation markWe’ve seen today some appalling images of young babies being put into these unseaworthy craft, and they’re shocking images, and they show the reality behind the ruthless smuggling gangs that are prepared to risk human lives for profit. That’s exactly why the government has signed a new payment-by-results deal with the French to prevent these perilous journeys from happening in the first place.

The government was “not complacent”, the spokesperson said. But he said joint action taken with the French since the general election had prevented 47,000 crossings.

A SNSM picture of the boat carrying 230 people from SNSM from the BBC Photograph: SNSM

Record 230 people cross Channel to UK as smugglers turn to ‘mega-dinghies’

A dinghy carrying a record 230 people has arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel in the early hours of Monday, Diane Taylor reports.

Rape crisis centres condemn Green MSP's rape 'spectrum' comment

The Scottish Rape Crisis Alliance (SRCA) has condemned a Green MSP over their comments about the “demonisation of rape”, the Press Association reports. PA says:

double quotation markQ Manivannan was also rebuked for saying rape exists on a “spectrum”. In an open letter, the alliance, which represents four rape crisis centres in Scotland, said there was “no hierarchy of rape” and warned the MSP not to “minimise” sexual violence. Manivannan has faced backlash from Scotland’s children’s minister, as well as Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. The comments from Manivannan, made during The Subjective Space podcast last year, sparked fury after they re-emerged online at the weekend. During the nearly hour-long exchange, Manivannan, a non-binary MSP who uses they/them pronouns, said there was a “demonisation of rape”. “It is a spectrum,” they added, “none of which is any worse or less or more worse, but it is a spectrum of things that constitute that one homogenised word, rape.” Manivannan also said there were “different modes” of consent and rape. The MSP went on to say that the idea of a rapist being a “big, big, burly man” was “not necessarily unfounded” but said it was “misconstrued” because “any individual is capable” of rape. The SRCA said it “fundamentally rejects the suggestion that society is demonising rape”. The alliance said: “We do not need to exaggerate its seriousness. We do not need to turn perpetrators into mythical monsters. “But neither should we be afraid to say plainly that rape is horrific, that it causes profound trauma and harm, and that responsibility for that harm belongs with the person who chose to violate another person.”

Farage says Restore Britain supporters would be 'horrified' by antisemitism of some of those in Rupert Lowe's 'inner circle'

At his press conference Nigel Farage claimed that voters who support Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party, which is even more rightwing and anti-immigrant than Reform UK, would be “horrified” by some of the people around Lowe.

Farage said some Lowe’s close allies were antisemitic. People like that would have to be “out of the inner circle” before Reform UK would hold talks with Restore Britain about cooperating, he said.

He said:

double quotation markI suspect many of those who say Restore in answer to a poll are perhaps not quite aware [of what people in the party are like]. They see Rupert, they see this farmer from Gloucestershire, and they think he makes sense. But those he’s got around him – I think they’d be pretty horrified too [by their views].

Last week Lowe said the two parties should work together. As Ben Quinn explained in an analysis at the time, the prospects of Farage and Lowe cooperating are slight. But without some sort of deal, the hard right vote is split.

Farage played down the prospect of councils or residents objecting to Reform UK’s plans for Nightingale prisons at his press conference this morning. When this idea was put to him, he said that Reform UK would place the jails on MoD land where military bases have closed and where local people would welcome the jobs being created.

Reform UK has said more about this in the policy document on this that it has released this morning. It says:

double quotation markThe Ministry of Defence manages 341,400 hectares of land within the UK. 1.4% of the UK land mass. The Defence Estate Optimisation portfolio currently lists around 30 former barracks and military sites that are no longer required for military use. Many of these brownfield sites are suitable for rapid construction of modular prisons, and we will change planning laws as necessary. Prefab cells are made in a factory, driven to site and craned into place, so most of the work is finished before anything arrives, and one design serves every site. Britain has already proved it at every scale: Millsike’s precast houseblocks each went up in twelve weeks; and the first Rapid Deployment Cells at Norwich held prisoners seven months after contracts were signed. Florida has shown the viability of this arrangement. ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ went up in eight days: off-the-shelf tents and modular units on an airstrip the state already owned, bought under emergency no-bid contracts, with capacity for 3,000 detainees and room to grow to 5,000.42 We would put the programme on an emergency footing, build on MoD land, buy standard kit, and thousands of places could exist within months at a fraction of the current cost.

Yusuf said, under Reform UK, councils and quangos would lose the right to object to new national critical infrastructure projects, and that prisons would be included in this category.

At his press conference, it was put to Farage that other foreign countries would refuse to take back the foreign offenders he wants to deport and that legal challenges would hold up the plan, just as they did with the Tories’ Rwanda policy.

Farage dismissed these concerns, saying:

double quotation markI believe that, with the right attitude, you can say to countries, ‘Look, if you do this for us, we’ll do that for you.’ There are ways and negotiations. Perhaps what it needs is some people negotiating on behalf of this country who’ve been in business before and know what doing deals really is.

And Yusuf said:

double quotation mark[This is a] really good example of the learned helplessness as someone who’s new to politics that I find fascinating. One of the really cool things that a government can do is change the laws. And I know that sounds crazy but, as Nigel said, the reason why the Rwanda plan stood no chance of success was because they weren’t even willing to leave the [European convention on human rights]. And that’s just the first of many steps that you would need to take in order to do the things that we are talking about … We are in an extraordinary situation. And the only way you resolve an extraordinary problem is through extraordinary solutions.

Farage claims election in 2027 'more than likely' because of risk of debt crisis

At his press conference, asked about an early election, Nigel Farage said he thought an election this year was “very unlikely”.

But he did think an election in 2027 was probable, he said. He said that national debt was rising faster than in any other country apart from Botswana (a figure based on a 25-year timetable) and he claimed there was a risk of a debt crisis. He went on:

He went:

double quotation markI’m not willing this. I don’t want us to have a debt market crisis. But I believe the likelihood of it increases with every single day that goes by. So I still believe an election next year is more than likely.

No 10 plays down prospect of further changes to prisoner early release scheme to exempt killers of PC Harper

Downing Street has said it is “not possible” to exempt “one or two offenders” convicted of manslaughter from early release amid pressure over the eligibility of PC Andrew Harper’s killers to be freed from prison from January, the Press Association reports. (See 9.35am.) PA says:

double quotation markNo 10 insisted Andy Burnham is “far from accepting the situation” but appeared to play down the prospect of an imminent carve-out to keep Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers behind bars. Some 5,000 people are expected to be released early under sentencing changes, down from 6,000 after the exemptions announced as part of an urgent review of the scheme. Under current plans, Cole and Bowers remain eligible to be freed halfway through their 13-year sentences after they were convicted of manslaughter in 2020 following PC Harper’s death in 2019. More than 880,000 people have signed a petition calling for them to remain in jail, with a government source telling The Daily Telegraph on Friday the prime minister is prepared to “explore every option” to block their early release. Asked whether this was correct at the lobby briefing this morning, the PM’s spokesperson said manslaughter of an emergency worker was “not a standalone offence” and it was “not possible to simply exclude one or two offenders” within the wider category of manslaughter. Asked whether ministers were accepting the situation as it stands, the spokesperson said: “I think you’ve seen from the prime minister’s words that he’s far from accepting the situation and as he wrote last week he wants to go even further. “He’s pushed hard on what more we could do and his focus now is on fixing the prison system long term to avoid a repeat of this prison crisis so that it never happens again.” Pressed on whether the prime minister was admitting there was nothing more he could do, the official said: “He understands the public wants him to go further, and he wanted to go further, but on the wider issue that prisons would have run out of space, police would stop making arrests, it would be impossible to lock up convicted offenders and that would put public safety at untold risk.”

Farage claims police 'very scared' of what inquiry into how they originally investigated alleged arson attack may show

Q: [From LBC’s Natasha Clark] You say prisoners should serve full sentences. Does that mean you don’t believe in rehabilitation?

Yusuf said:

double quotation markWhat we’re saying very clearly is that those who kill people, those who rape, violent thugs, will not be allowed out of jail a day early under a Reform government.

And Farage said he did believe in rehabilitation. But 1% of criminals were responsible for a large amount of crime, and protecting the public took precedence over rehabilitating them.

Q: Do you have confidence in the police?

Farage replied:

double quotation markThis is a very difficult question to answer because I want to be on the side of the police. Of course I do. Instinctively, I want to be on the side of the police. I think I’ve made it clear already. But, up until this moment in time, I think this political party and its senior figures have been treated with contempt by many organisations of the state, not just the police force or the counter-terrorism unit within it.

Farage also said that the fact that counter-terrorism police have referred themselves to the Independent Office for Police Conduct over the original investigation into the alleged arson attack at his home showed they were “obviously very, very scared of what the truth is when it comes out”.

But it also showed they were not trying to cover it up, he said.

Nigel Farage (right) and Zia Yusuf at their press conference at the Royal Horseguards Hotel in Westminster. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Farage says, although small boat arrival numbers coming down, they are still 'horrendous'

Q: [From Rob Powell from Sky News] You mentioned the record number of arrivals on a single boat. (See 10.33am.) But isn’t it the case that people are having to use bigger boats because the smaller boats keep getting seized? The numbers are coming down.

Farage said he always said the people smugglers were going to start using bigger boats.

And he said, while overall numbers were down, they were still “horrendous”.

UPDATE: Farage said:

double quotation markI’ve always thought the boats would get bigger – I’ve always thought they would. And we were pretty shocked the other day. Do you remember 173? That was about two weeks ago if I remember rightly. We were shocked at 173. Well, we’re already up by another 25%. And yes, the overall numbers this year are down but they’re still horrendous … Yes, we have managed to stop some of the dinghies but it doesn’t stop the problem – it doesn’t go away. It is still something that is completely out of control.

Q: [From ITV’s Carl Dinnen] What will the Nightingale prisons be like?

Yusuf said they would be erected with prefabricated, modular technology.

They would house a lower category of prisoner, he said. But they would be secure, he said.

He also said Florida was an example of a place where places for 3,000 prisoners were built in a matter of days.

Yusuf also claimed it cost £600,000 to build a single prison place in the UK. That was partly because of planning regulations, he said. And it was partly because people building prisons needed a high level of security clearance, he said. Yusuf said Reform UK would get round this by getting the army involved.

Farage welcomes revived police probe into alleged arson attack at his home after Widdecombe murder

Q: [From Jack Elsom from the Sun] Can you tell us anything more about the Ann Widdecombe investigation to cover an arson attack at your home?

That was a reference to this story.

Farage replied:

double quotation markShortly before the horrific murder of Ann Widdecombe, I did publicly say something I hadn’t said for a year, which was about an incident that occurred at my home address. The issue was basically arson, and the attempted forcing of the door. I hadn’t mentioned it for a year, because I generally don’t mention in public the security concerns that I have, because there have been too many of them that have happened. I spoke about this in the context of me needing to be provided with security clearly to the end of my days. Ann, 78, been out of office for many, many years. And I discussed that around the issue of money, of my own future protection. Of course, most of the media organisations in this room called me a liar.

This is a very partial account of what happened earlier this year. Farage did say, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, that there had been an arson attack on his home which he had not revealed before. You would find it very hard to find any mainstream media organisation that called him a liar. But journalists (including from the Guardian) pointed out that he had had given this interview as a “spoiler” because it came when he knew the Guardian was about to publish the story about how he had received an undisclosed £5m donation from the cryptobillionaire Christopher Harborne, and Farage told the Telegraph about the donation and said that it was wholly unrelated to his political work and that it was just a gift to fund his security for the rest of his life (which is why he mentioned the arson attack). Some people are very sceptical about this explanation – particularly in the light of stories like this. Doubts were also raised about the arson story after the Observer reported that, while the police recorded an attempted burglary at Farage’s home, they did not record an arson attack.

In his answer at the press conference, Farage went on:

double quotation markThe truth is, there was an investigation into this. And clearly counter-terrorism [police] made some mistakes, which is why they referred themselves to the Independent Office of Police Complaints. I understand this is a completely unprecedented move. And, yes, this is directly linked to the murder of Ann Widdecombe. And I’m afraid I just can’t tell you any more than that at this stage. It’s a great, great tragedy that it took the death of Ann for the security services in Britain to finally take seriously the safety and security of Reform politicians and reform prominent figures. Up until that moment, we had been treated very differently to everybody else. For example, four days after the murder of Charlie Kirk, I had nearly all of my security removed from me. We have been ignored. Our situation has been undervalued. But I’m not going to say anything now to prejudice [the investigation], because I do actually believe in my heart that counter-terrorism are now seriously doing this job, and I have confidence in them. I’d love to tell you more. It will come out, but I just dare not breach that trust and confidence with counter-terrorism at this stage.

The police have yet to confirm any such link between Widdecombe’s murder and the alleged firebombing of Farage’s home. Police did not identify any suspects during their investigation of the incident at the time, which was treated as an attempted burglary, and so the investigation was closed, pending any new lines of inquiry.

Since the case was reopened, CTP London said it had identified a line of inquiry “which may have been relevant” but was “not identified and pursued by [counter-terrorism police] at the time”.

The police watchdog said it was now investigating the conduct of a CTP London staff member over allegations that they “failed to identify and pursue a line of inquiry”.

Q: What would happen to foreign prisoners sent to El Salvador after their release? Would they stay there, or would they be allowed back?

Yusuf said they would not be allowed to return to the UK.

Whether they would be allowed to stay in El Salvador or not would be a matter for the negotiations, he said.