Farage Vows To Deport Legal UK Migrants

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has launched a powerful, no-holds-barred attack on Reform UK's proposal to abolish Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), labelling the policy "racist," "immoral," and a genuine threat to the fundamental values of British society. Speaking at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, Starmer directly confronted Nigel Farage’s agenda, which he warned risked "tearing this country apart" by targeting people who have legally built their lives in the UK.

Reform UK's controversial policy aims to scrap ILR—the main route to permanent settlement open to non-EEA citizens who have lived and worked legally in the UK for five continuous years—and retrospectively strip the status from those who already hold it. Instead, all non-citizens would be required to apply for a visa every five years, face new, more stringent requirements, including higher salary thresholds (reportedly around £60,000, almost double the median UK salary of £31,602), and tougher English language tests.

Farage’s Strategy: A Toxic Cocktail of Grievance and Injustice

Farage and Reform UK have explicitly made immigration a central pillar of their campaign, a strategy critics argue is a calculated move to gain the votes of white British citizens by framing legal migrants as a burden on the nation. The party claims their immigration overhaul, including the abolition of ILR, would save the taxpayer a staggering £230 billion over the next few decades.

Read Also: Settlement Shock: Migrants Must 'earn' Right To Stay, Vows Mahmood

However, this figure has been widely discredited. The think tank cited by Reform, the Centre for Policy Studies, later distanced itself from the fiscal data, stating the cost estimates should no longer be used. Independent analysis, including that based on the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) modelling, suggests the opposite: a reduction in net migration, especially of working-age people, would likely worsen public finances. Migrants are generally of prime working age, and their tax contributions, along with visa surcharges, often result in a net fiscal benefit. One analysis estimates that the plan could cost the UK economy £70-90 billion over the next decade due to lost contributions and the high costs of mass detention and deportation.

An Unprecedented Attack on Human Rights and Social Fabric

Starmer called the policy out directly, stating on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “I do think that it is a racist policy. I do think it is immoral. It needs to be called out for what it is.” He acknowledged that many Reform voters are motivated by genuine frustration over 14 years of Conservative failure but stressed the policy itself is fundamentally unjust.

The plan threatens to upend the lives of the estimated 430,000 non-EU citizens who held ILR status at the end of 2024, many of whom have lived in the UK for decades, raised families, and contributed significantly to the economy and public services. The retrospective removal of settlement rights is an unprecedented move that violates a basic sense of fairness and the expectation of stability promised to those who followed the rules.

•  Impact on Public Services: The Royal College of Nursing has warned that thousands of migrant nurses would lose their jobs, destabilising the NHS. Foreign-born staff are critical to the health service; approximately one in three doctors and one in four nurses in the UK are migrants. The policy is seen as sending a clear message: that their labour is welcome, but their lives and stability are not.
• Contradiction of British Values: Critics argue that targeting people who are "our neighbours," who work in "our hospitals, in our schools, running businesses," is an attack on the foundational British values of tolerance, diversity, and the rule of law. Reform UK's proposals, which Farage has indicated would necessitate leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), are a direct challenge to the human rights protections currently afforded to those settled in the UK.

The Government's Response: Subtle Shift

While Starmer has drawn a hard line against Reform's radical proposal, the Labour Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has suggested the government may itself consider tougher restrictions on future ILR applicants. Mahmood, speaking to The Sun, said she was looking at linking settlement status not only to finances—such as salary and taxes—but also to the "wider contribution you are making to our communities," citing her own parents who came to the UK from Kashmir in the 1970s. This move signals a political need to address public concerns over legal migration figures, which stood at 431,000 in 2024 (a fall from previous years but higher than the 2010s average of 200,000-300,000).

Despite the subtle shift from the government on future settlement rules, the contrast remains stark: Starmer's condemnation of Farage's plan focuses on the gross injustice of retrospectively stripping rights from people already settled, a policy that poll data shows a majority of the public, even across political divides, opposes. Only 29% of Britons support removing ILR from those who already hold it, even if they support ending the status for new arrivals. Starmer's stand positions the government against what he frames as the politics of "division and decline" offered by Reform UK.