Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has set out a defence and foreign policy plan aimed at restoring Britain's standing as a world power, warning that threats from Iran, Russia and China are real.
Writing for the Daily Express, Farage said the threats facing Britain are no longer abstract, pointing to lone-wolf terrorists and state-sponsored actors, many of them working at the behest of the Islamic Republic in Tehran, entering the country through porous borders. He said he has warned about this for years, with his concerns falling on the deaf ears of a complicit political class.
Border security and defence spending
Farage argued that being respected abroad starts at home, saying a nation that cannot police its own borders will hardly be taken seriously on the global stage. That is why Reform UK's new National Security Review, headed by new Shadow Armed Forces Minister and 40-year military veteran Angus MacIntyre, makes border security the party's top-tier priority.
He said Britain's national security does not end at the 12-mile line, and that moral and practical involvement is central to the security of the Euro-Atlantic region. The plan includes spending 3 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030 and 3.5 per cent by 2035, paid for partly by putting a hard £1 billion cap on the foreign aid budget.
Farage said this cannot mean simply hurling money at the same flawed MoD procurement processes that have left the forces threadbare. He called for an era-defining shift in priorities for the nuclear deterrent, undersea defence, and a future full of cyber and space-based threats.
International courts and alliances
At home, Farage said the Muslim Brotherhood must be banned. Abroad, he said the UK must use its UN Security Council veto in pursuit of explicitly British interests, with alliances founded on the mutual pursuit of freedom and strengthened by intelligence sharing and secure common supply chains.
He said the old political fixations on the European Court of Human Rights, the International Criminal Court and the Refugee Convention no longer reflect the priorities of ordinary Britons. Reform UK will leave the ECHR, repeal the Human Rights Act, disapply the Refugee Convention, and refuse to let any international court override British law.
Peace and national infrastructure
Farage said the approach puts peace and the ability to deliver it back on the agenda, noting conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, between America and Iran, and further afield. He said if shipping lines are open, prices come down, and if bombs are not dropping, energy prices are lower.
He said Vladimir Putin sees the UK's weaknesses and exploits them, and that airports, hospitals, energy, food security and wider infrastructure are off limits. Reform UK will invest heavily in them to ensure any attempts to attack fail.
Farage said the Falklands, the Chagos and Gibraltar are British, and that the UK will not pay reparations to anyone. He said the UK must be far more wary of Communist China, whose lust for Taiwan could crash the entire global economy, and that Britain has to be at the forefront of ensuring that never happens.
He called for an immediate sea change in mentality that can only come at the ballot box, through consequential political change at home. Reform UK rejects the idea that the nation must be in decline, and can be a nation on the rise once again.
