Nigel Farage RECAP: Reform chief unveils plan to remove foreign nationals from UK prisons to El Salvador jails . hyn

Reform’s plans to shake-up the prison are not serious, Labour has said.

Following this morning’s press conference, Nigel Farage was accused of selling a dream that would spend years to come to fruition.

A Labour spokesperson said: “This isn’t a serious prison plan. Nigel Farage knows full well that renting prison places overseas would take years to arrange and does nothing to tackle the pressures we face now.

“While Reform chase headlines, this Labour government is getting on with the job – building 14,000 additional prison places and removing foreign criminals at pace. Almost 10,000 foreign criminals have been removed since the election, up 36% on the previous 21 months.

“Farage can try to change the subject all her likes, but he still needs to come clean about his secret £5 million “gift” from his crypto billionaire backer. The public deserves to know who is funding Reform, and why.”

Labour has already pledged to remove foreign national offenders.

The number of foreign criminals deported early under Labour has “rocketed” by 75%, the former Justice Secretary has announced in December.

David Lammy told MPs more than 2,700 foreign national offenders were deported under the early removal scheme in the last year, up from just 1,560 in the final year of the Tory Government.

The Ex-Deputy PM claimed the figures showed the Government’s determination to sort out the prisons crisis. Speaking in the Commons during justice questions, he said: “We said that we are determined to remove foreign national offenders from our prisons sooner, and we have.”

Read the full piece here.

Responding to news that police have reopened a probe into an alleged firebomb attack at his house, Nigel Farage said his party “had been treated very differently to everybody else” before the death of former MP Ann Widdecombe.

Asked about the probe, Mr Farage told reporters: “Clearly, counterterrorism made some mistakes, which is why they referred themselves to the Independent Office of Police (Conduct) (IOPC).

“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.”

Nigel Farage wraps up the press conference. We’re likely to start getting reaction to his plans to send foreign offenders overseas.

As mentioned in a previous post, the proposals are not too dissimilar to plans announced last year to send serious offenders abroad.

In response to last summer’s speech, then Labour chair Ellie Reeves said Reform was “more interested in headline-chasing than serious policy-making in the interests of the British people.”

Nigel Farage is told that he is spending the summer speaking about immigration – an area he is “very comfortable on”.

Asked when he might speak about other areas – like trade, foreign policy, defence or business – he says he thinks a general election will be held next year and that the state of government finances needs to be better focused on.

He says the UK is in “really, really big trouble” and suggests the markets could lose confidence in 24 hours, triggering the need to call a general election.

Author and former prison officer Vanessa Frake and Reform UK chairman Lee Anderson will visit El Salvador, Nigel Farage has said, as part of talks to see whether the country could house foreign national offenders.

“To house a foreign national offender in El Salvador will be half the cost of housing a foreign national offender in this country, and will give us more prison spaces,” Mr Farage said at a press conference on Monday.

The Reform UK leader had earlier told reporters: “Prison sentencing has proved to be Andy Burnham’s first big test as Prime Minister.

“In the wake of the PC (Andrew) Harper case, the Prime Minister’s instincts were, ‘well, of course they shouldn’t be released early’. But once he’s told the practical facts of life, he has to back away and back down.”

Mr Farage also said “it’s true that Labour have inherited a very, very difficult situation” from the Conservatives, but added: “They don’t appear to have the imagination or the will to solve it.”

Mr Farage said human rights charities who help people enter Britain should be charged with “aiding and abetting illegal immigration”.

He claims NGOs are helping to facilitate illegal immigration and “that includes bringing in criminals and potential terrorists”.

Without giving specific evidence, he suggests “the criminal trade is not bringing in refugees” and is bringing in young men who are “very, very dangerous”.

According to House of Commons research, since 2018, 95% of people detected arriving on small boats have gone on to claim asylum. This proportion has been higher in recent years, reaching 99% in 2025 and 98% in 2024.

179,000 asylum applications have been made by people who arrived by small boat between 2018 and 2025. By the end of this period, 133,000 (74%) of these applications had received a substantive initial decision; 80,000 (60% of those decided) resulted in a grant of protection and 53,000 (40%) were refused.

Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf are now taking questions from reporters.

Asked if their small boats and prisons policies are a Trump-style response to Labour’s ‘Burnham bounce’ in the polls, Mr Farage goes on a long rant about how it is “impossible” to smash the network of people smuggling gangs.

Mirror Political Correspondent Dave Burke writes in from the press conference…

As Zia Yusuf speaks, a Reform staffer hands out copies of the latest plans.

Earlier Mr Yusuf announced he would be drawing up thousands of pages of legislation to keep people locked up. If this is anything to go by, he’ll have to up his game – this document is just 16 pages.

That includes the contents page, title page and endnotes.

I can, however, confirm that the ink is dry. Last week’s small boats plan was 25 pages and was torn to shreds within hours.

I wonder how this thinner document will fare.

Nigel Farage mentions Kosovo and El Savador as potential destinations to deport foreign national offenders.

He says Reform UK is organising a trip to El Salvador, saying it is cheaper to house criminals there and will free up spaces in jails in England and Wales.

But this is not a completely new idea. Mr Farage – who has been trying to divert attention from questions over his public finances – appears to have rehashed a policy Reform announced this time last year.

Last summer, the Reform UK leader proposed sending some serious offenders to serve their sentences overseas. Kosovo, Estonia and El Salvador were referenced as possible locations.

Nigel Farage is up and giving a speech at the presser.

He is talking about the prisons crisis – which he blames on the Tories.

He now turns to the more than 10,000 foreign national offenders in jails. He says he will send them back to their origin country, and if that country refuses to take them, they will be deported to third party countries.

Labour has rubbished Reform’s El Salvador plan for prisoners, saying the party has “no serious answers” to the crisis sparked by the Conservative Party.

A spokesperson said: “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.

“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.”

A government minister has lashed out at Nigel Farage over last week’s botched small boats announcement.

Chris McDonald dismissed the plan to use the Royal Navy as “ridiculous”, after it was torpedoed by France. It comes after a photo at the weekend showed a man carrying a baby with no life jacket onto a dangerous small boat.

Business minister Mr McDonald said: “It’s absolutely heartbreaking. I think it just shows you how desperate people are, that they would make a crossing like that, and they would take their small baby with them, knowing just how dangerous it is. And that’s why, as I say, the measures that we’ve taken essentially to reduce attractiveness, increase deportations, and so on, which have significantly reduced the number of crossings, they will have saved people’s lives, they will have saved the lives of small children, as you’ve just said.”

He added: “I think it also just shows how ridiculous this policy is from Reform, to imagine that we’re going to put destroyers in the Channel to push dinghies back. That’s not how this can work. It needs to work by doing all of the things that we’re doing, by reducing incentives, by having our agreement with France to tighten up on people leaving the beaches, and ultimately also tackling the criminal gangs as well. We’ve seen the results of that. That’s kept people safe. It’s reducing the number of people who are coming across the channel. And it’s absolutely right that we really keep in mind those individuals and the lengths that they’re going to and the danger that they’re in at sea.”

(Image: Ioannis Alexopoulos/LNP)

Business minister Chris McDonald has said the country must “face up” to the dangerous lack of prison spaces amid backlash over the pending release of two of PC Andrew Harper’s killers.

Mr McDonald told Sky News: “I don’t think anybody in the country wants to see Pc Harper’s killers on the streets but I think we also have to face up to the situation that we’re in, which is a desperate shortage of prison capacity.

“The previous government managed to close a whole load of prisons and only add on 500 places in 14 years – we’ve added on thousands more prison cells since we came into power.”

He said Mr Burnham had “personally intervened to ensure that the most dangerous prisoners will not be released” and said any released criminals are “not being set free”, because they will be subject to arrangements such as tagging and monitoring.

Zia Yusuf has claimed Reform UK will prepare “thousands of pages of legislation” to help keep criminals in prison for longer.

The party’s home affairs spokesman lashed out following reports Prime Minister Andy Burnham will be unable to block the release of two men jailed for killing a police officer.

Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers are eligible to be freed halfway through their 13-year prison sentences. They were convicted of manslaughter in 2020 following Pc Andrew Harper’s death in 2019.

At the moment around 97% of usable prison space is full. Mr Yusuf told GB News his party wanted to “clear out all of the foreign national offenders very quickly” from UK prisons.

“If their home countries won’t take them, then we’re going to send them to countries like El Salvador or Kosovo,” he added. “We’re going to rent prison spaces there and that will be our message to countries like Albania – if you won’t take back the many people in our jails from your country, they’re going to serve their sentences in El Salvador.

“We’ll use that space to end early release for good for people who commit crimes, people who are killers, people who are rapists, people who are violent thugs.”

Wes Streeting has hit back after a radio caller’s homophobic rant questioning the decision to make him Defence Secretary.

The Labour frontbencher urged followers to “be stong by being you” after a clip of the exchange was widely shared online. The caller, named John, was labeled a “dinosaur” and told he should be ashamed of himself by host Henry Riley.

Mr Riley closed off the exchange by telling John to “give your head a wobble” after he claimed there were “too many gays in charge” and hit out at Mr Streeting.

The Cabinet member, who was appointed to the new role by Andy Burnham, has previously revealed he has faced an “unbelievable” volume of homophobic abuse. He posted on X: “Water off a duck’s back. My message to every single young person who worries about encountering this sort of thing in their lives and careers is simple: we are stronger, they are weaker, and the future is brighter.”

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By giving his press conference, Mr Farage will be taking time out from campaigning in his “people versus the establishment” by-election.

He stepped down as an MP to trigger the contest, only for all other parties to boycott it and brand it a circus. It means the Reform leader has been busy knocking on doors in Clacton persuading him to back him rather than Count Binface.

He’s expected to win – but it’s hard to see what point he’ll have proved if he does. At the time he stepped down he was facing a Parliamentary standards investigation into the £5million ‘gift’, and that’s expected to resume.

In an interview with The Big Issue, Binface said Mr Farage is more establishment than him, stating: “I can’t help thinking that the guy who’s taken at least five million quid, who says that he can spend it on Ferraris if he wants, who has been a member of parliament until he hit the self-destruct button, and was also a member of the European parliament, who has had various controversies over funding, and likes to hang around at hunts and wear corduroy trousers, etc, etc…

“It’s up to humans to decide whether that man is more establishment than a lone wolf space warrior with a Ceefax fetish. It’s not for me to say.”

Mr Farage’s showdown with Count Binface is on Thursday

So what do we know about what Mr Farage will announce?

Well, according to The Sun, former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson will head to El Salvador later in the year for exploratory talks about sending foreign criminals there.

Mr Anderson, Reform’s chief whip, is entrusted with hammering out details of potential deal similar to one agreed by Donald Trump.

If correct, it would see prisoners transferred to South America to serve their sentences.

It is unclear how much work Reform has done into potential legal and logistical obstacles.

Mr Yusuf told the newspaper: “We will deport all 10,000 foreign nationals from our prisons, sending them to serve their sentences in countries like El Salvador.

“We will use the space created to ensure that serious criminals stay where they belong: behind bars.”

Mirror political correspondent Dave Burke writes inIt’s a tricky time for Nigel Farage at the moment.

There are serious questions knocking around about his own and his party’s finances, and it’s clearly taking a toll. Polls show Reform are slipping while Labour enjoys a ‘Burnham bounce’.How long that’ll last for remains to be seen, but Mr Farage’s personal ratings have also nosedived in recent weeks.

And things aren’t looking that brilliant going forward, either. If he wins the farcical Clacton by-election – which he is almost certain to do – he goes back to a heap of problems in Westminster.

A Parliamentary standards probe into an undeclared £5million ‘gift’ he was given by Thailand-based tech billionaire Christopher Harborne is expected to reopen, and could trigger yet another contest in the coming months.

Last week he decided to try and get on the front foot with announcements on immigration, which is usually his safe space. But that proved to be a disaster.

His not-very-detailed plan to use the Royal Navy to stop small boats was shredded almost immediately by the French government, who said it would be a violation of its sovereignty. And Mr Farage’s home affairs chief, Zia Yusuf, was brutally mocked for announcing firms who employ workers with no right to work in the UK would face jail terms under Reform.

The problem for him was that Labour has already brought in such a law. He was branded a “pillock” as a result.

Today Mr Farage is expected to announce plans to send foreign criminals overseas to serve their sentences. How much detail we’ll get on how that works remains to be see, but according to reports talks will be held with El Salvador later this year.

Will it disintegrate as fast as last week’s policies? The devil will be in the detail, but that scarcely matters for Mr Farage.

At the moment Reform needs headlines that aren’t about sleaze, and the party leader will welcome any opportunity to get them.

A voter living in Farage’s desired constituency of Clacton has said he doesn’t plan to vote in this week’s byelection, adding that, as the Reform leader plans to make a presentation believed to centre on his ambitions to become Prime Minister, he has only ever seen him “once” in his community.

Ashley Scott, from Kirby Cross, told the Independent Farage is a “waste of space”, adding of the last time he sold him: “I saw him last week on the ferris wheel making some content.” He added: “But then before the place got busy, he just got in his Range Rover.”

Farage and Yusuf will get on stage later today for the third time in as many weeks today during what should be peak campaigning time for Reform’s leader.

He is competing in a crowded field for the Clacton byelection this coming Thursday, August 13. While he is expected to return to Parliament as an MP, he has seen some stiff competition from dozens of competitors, namely Count Binface.

The investigation into Farage’s £5 million gift has been reopened(Image: Dinendra Haria/SOPA Images/Shutterstock)

Nigel Farage has been branded the “MP for Washington” after spending one in four of his Commons speeches parroting Donald Trump’s attacks on Britain.

Farage slammed the agreement, which would have seen the UK hand control of the islands to Mauritius, in 10 of his 40 speeches. Many of his remarks on the Chagos deal echoed attacks made by Trump, whose opposition helped derail the deal earlier this year.

After returning from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in December 2024, Farage told MPs that senior figures in the incoming US administration had expressed “deep disquiet” over Britain’s plans.

He later warned the agreement could destroy hopes of a UK-US trade deal, claiming Britain’s chances of avoiding American tariffs would “evaporate”.

Zia Yusuf held not one but two press conferences for Reform UK last week.

His second one saw him ridiculed and labelled a “pillock” after he announced measures that seemingly already existed.

On Thursday Reform’s home affairs spokesman Mr Yusuf was accused of trying to divert attention from sleaze allegations by announcing a ‘Deliveroo law’ to target illegal working. He was mocked when it was pointed out that company chiefs already face jail terms, as Mr Yusuf had demanded.

Read the full story here.

This time last year Nigel Farage had been holding weekly conferences – but he has since scurried away from public scrutiny amid questions over a £5million gift he received from a cypro billionaire.

Will August be the return of the Farage weekly press conferences? So far, yes. We saw Farage out in front of reporters last Monday and he’s back again this week.

Last time, he focused on small boats. Read Mirror Political Correspondent Dave Burke’s analysis on the last press conference as he looks at Farage’s attempt to “divert attention” from questions about his personal finances.

Nigel Farage will hold a press conference at 11 today with his home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf.

The event is expected to centre on crime and the early release prison scheme.

Since becoming PM, Andy Burnham has been under pressure over plans to release prisoners early from jail. The sentencing changes were implemented under Keir Starmer in response to a prisons overcrowding crisis left behind by the Tories.

Mr Burnham has since tightened the rules so that rape, serious child sexual offences and grooming would be excluded from the early jail release scheme.

But he has faced mounting calls to stop the early prison release of PC Andrew Harper’s killers, two of whom will be eligible for early release as manslaughter charges are not included on the exemptions list.