It is nearly two years to the day since Nigel Farage told me that mass deportations were “politically impossible”.
He went further, telling me that such a policy was not even his ambition.
“If I say I support mass deportations, that’s all anybody would talk about for the next 20 years, so it’s pointless even going there,” he added.
My interview, recorded for GB News, never aired on its television channel, but was posted on Twitter and YouTube. The clip became a viral sensation. Millions saw it, and to this day I still get tagged by people reminding Farage of his infamous words.
Gallingly, the Conservatives posted the clip in several attack ads, despite having presided over hundreds of thousands of illegal Channel crossings without deporting a single migrant to Rwanda. Incidentally, their leader, Kemi Badenoch, has refused to do a similar interview with me on multiple occasions.
Soon, Farage’s words began a row between the Reform leader and one of his most outspoken MPs, Rupert Lowe.
In January 2025, Farage blocked Lowe from using the phrase “mass deportations” in a speech to Reform’s North West Essex conference. In March of that year, Farage told The Telegraph that he had stopped Lowe using “mass deportations” and “repatriation” in the speech, describing them as “a very grave, dark and dangerous use of language”.
Just months later, however, Farage was saying “mass deportations” himself.
In August, Farage proposed legislation to allow a Reform government to detain and deport people living in Britain illegally. “The aim of this legislation is mass deportations,” he told The Times.
Reform’s own website now features a quote from Zia Yusuf saying that “every day that passes without mass deportations risks ever more blood on the government’s hands,” while other Reform bigwigs have used the phrase repeatedly.
So why did I ask Farage about mass deportations? And why did his position shift so quickly and dramatically after our interview?
Mass deportation was the slogan of Trump’s successful campaign for president in 2024. It became a rallying cry for Americans furious with Joe Biden’s open-border policy, which saw millions of illegal migrants enter through the country’s southern border.
For American conservatives, the deportation of illegal migrants has become a defining political priority, perhaps the defining priority. After all, what is a nation without borders?
Illegal migrants in Britain and the United States have committed horrific crimes, all of which could have been prevented if said migrants had never entered, or were swiftly deported. Every rape by an Afghan “refugee” or stabbing by a Sudanese “asylum seeker” entering the country via small boat is, by definition, a government failure.
Illegal immigrants are also incredibly expensive. British taxpayers spent an estimated £8 billion on asylum seekers in 2025, according to the independent audit website Asylum Stats.
Then there is the long-term political impact. Illegal migrants who are allowed to remain may eventually be legalised or, in some cases, become citizens and voters. Ronald Reagan’s 1986 immigration law legalised nearly three million people, while some Republicans today are again backing legislation that would give legal status to millions living in America illegally.
Immigration, in other words, can ultimately reshape not only a country’s population, but its electorate.
My interview with Farage came at the height of the Trump 2024 campaign. Sitting down in a messy hotel room at the InterContinental in Washington DC, I asked the Reform leader about Trump’s campaign slogan, and whether he would apply his friend’s policy to Britain.
Perhaps it should not be surprising that Farage’s answers were tepid at best. Before asking about mass deportations in our 35-minute exchange, I asked whether he was concerned that the white British population had declined from 87% to 74% in twenty years.
“No, that’s not a concern of mine,” he replied, arguing that the real problem was the “population explosion” and the resulting pressure on housing, public services and even traffic.
