Nigel Farage has launched Reform UK's plan to halve crime within five years, claiming Britain is in the grip of lawlessness despite official statistics showing violent crime is falling. Speaking at a darkened London venue with curtains drawn, Farage was joined by two former Conservative MPs turned Reform councillors, Laila Cunningham and Sarah Pochin, to unveil a £17bn package of measures including mass stop-and-search, sending prisoners to El Salvador, and abandoning diversity targets in policing.
Farage urged the public to disregard government crime figures, saying: 'Don't believe the statistics that show violent crime is going down. Just turn the graphs the other way up and use your own data.' He called for 30,000 new police officers, all of whom should be 'white, heterosexual men' to ensure proper law enforcement. The Reform leader also proposed building 'Nightingale prisons' and deporting foreign offenders, while suggesting that serious criminals could be sent to El Salvador—a remark he later dismissed as not serious.
Cunningham, who admitted she expects to be robbed every time she leaves her home, described London as a 'ruined city' where only shoplifters and drug dealers—'most of them foreigners'—are active. Pochin, meanwhile, claimed that most Afghan migrants are potential sex offenders and expressed nostalgia for a time when all rapists were white. She also defended Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for inciting violence against refugees, calling the sentence unjust.
The event highlighted tensions within Reform, with no mention of MP James McMurdock, who is under investigation over Covid loan fraud allegations. Farage has reportedly fallen out with several of his MPs, but Pochin remains a favoured candidate for home secretary. Critics note that Farage himself has shaped the UK's current economic woes through his Brexit campaign, yet his plan offers no explanation for how to reverse the damage.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Keir Starmer faced a grilling from the liaison committee in Westminster, where Labour MPs were notably tougher on him than in previous sessions. The contrast between Starmer's measured approach and Farage's apocalyptic rhetoric underscores the deepening divide in British politics as the summer recess approaches.
