Zia Yusuf and Nigel Farage have attacked the ‘Boriswave’ of immigration (Image: Getty)
Nigel Farage’s plan for a national migration inquiry has been ridiculed by the Conservatives as a “circular firing squad”. Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, demanded that Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, who defected from the Tories earlier this year, be compelled to give evidence under oath about their handling of migration in government.
The row erupted after Reform published a report claiming the unprecedented surge in migration between 2021 and 2024 will cost every household in Britain £20,000, a total bill the party puts at £622billion. Mr Philp said he would “look forward” to Reform explaining when Mr Jenrick and Mrs Braverman “will be hauled into the dock to explain the Suella Surge and the Jenrick Jump“.
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A Conservative source added: “Zia Yusuf spent months publicly savaging Jenrick and Braverman. Then Farage recruited them anyway. Now Reform are investigating their own front bench. Nigel Farage‘s idea of a functional shadow cabinet is closer to a circular firing squad.”
Mr Philp said the Conservatives were “under new leadership and setting out clear plans to drastically reduce legal immigration”. He accused Reform of “stuffing their ranks with has-been former politicians whilst pretending they represent change”.
Reform’s report claims that between 2021-24, Boris Johnson and his successors issued 3.8million long-term visas, resulting in net migration of 2.6million people.
The party warns that between 1.6million and 2.2million of those migrants are now becoming eligible for Indefinite Leave to Remain, granting them full access to the British welfare state.
Mr Yusuf said the country was “standing on the edge of a fiscal disaster” and branded the surge the “Boriswave” a “legacy of Tory incompetence”.
Mrs Braverman, who served as home secretary during a sharp rise in immigration, said she would stand by her record and welcomed the inquiry.
“When I arrived at the Home Office in September 2022, the number of work and study visas issued the previous year had already exceeded one million,” she said. “The Boriswave was flooding the country.”
Mrs Braverman claimed she had arrived in government with a plan to cut net migration but was blocked by the Conservative leadership.
A Reform UK source previously told the Daily Express that the inquiry would consider “whether their gross negligence in office amounted to criminal conduct”.
When asked whether that could apply to Mrs Braverman and Mr Jenrick, Mr Farage said: “I would love to know, was this just sheer incompetence, or was this done wilfully?”
Mr Yusuf added: “That is the point of an inquiry. We do not want to make too many presumptions.”
The plans, announced by Reform on Monday, would replace Indefinite Leave to Remain with a five-year renewable visa.
Mr Farage would also terminate welfare payments to foreign nationals, as well as bring in higher salary thresholds to visa requirements and ban people from claiming benefits.
Tories Mock Reform Migration Inquiry as ‘Circular Firing Squad’
Reform UK’s proposal for a national inquiry into Britain’s post-Brexit migration surge has triggered an immediate Conservative backlash, with the Tories mocking Nigel Farage’s plans as a “circular firing squad” because several former Conservative ministers who helped shape the policy have since joined Reform.
The row centres on what Reform has labelled the “Boriswave” — the sharp rise in legal migration during the years following Britain’s departure from the European Union. Reform has promised that, if it forms a government, it would establish a national inquiry into how the increase happened, who authorised the policies behind it and what consequences followed.
But the proposal has created an unusual political problem for Farage. Some of the politicians who held senior government positions during the period under investigation are now members of Reform UK themselves.
Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, both former Conservative ministers with responsibility for immigration policy, have joined Farage’s party. That has allowed the Conservatives to argue that Reform’s proposed investigation could end up examining the actions of people now sitting on its own front bench.
A Conservative source described the situation as a “circular firing squad”, arguing that Farage was simultaneously recruiting former Conservative ministers and criticising the policies implemented while they were in government.
What Reform wants to investigate
The proposed inquiry was unveiled by Reform during a press conference in April 2026.
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman at the time, said the party regarded the rise in legal migration as one of the most significant political controversies of recent years. He argued that a Reform government would investigate how the migration increase occurred, who authorised the individual policies and why they were introduced.
Yusuf also said that Boris Johnson and former Home Secretary Priti Patel would be expected to give evidence under oath, along with other people involved in decisions surrounding immigration policy.
Farage has similarly argued that the consequences of the migration increase have not been adequately examined.
The language used by Reform has been exceptionally strong. Yusuf described the migration increase as a “financial catastrophe” and argued that it had caused enormous damage to Britain. Reform has also linked the issue to its estimate that the long-term cost associated with migrants who could become eligible for indefinite leave to remain could run into hundreds of billions of pounds.
Those figures are Reform’s own estimates and depend heavily on assumptions about future employment, taxation, welfare use, healthcare and other public expenditure. They should therefore be understood as political and economic projections rather than established bills that the government has already incurred.
Why the Conservatives are attacking the proposal
The Conservative response focuses less on the principle of examining immigration policy and more on the people who could be involved.
Chris Philp, the Conservative shadow home secretary, questioned how Reform would handle the role of former Conservative ministers who are now members of Farage’s party.
His criticism was particularly directed at the recruitment of Jenrick and Braverman.
Both politicians served in senior government roles during the period Reform now wants investigated. Braverman served as home secretary, while Jenrick held senior positions within the Home Office and was minister for immigration.
Their later move to Reform creates an obvious political complication.
If an inquiry examined decisions made while they were ministers, they could potentially be questioned about policies they themselves helped administer. That does not automatically mean they would be responsible for any eventual findings, but it gives the Conservatives an opportunity to question Reform’s claim that it represents a complete break with the political establishment.
The Conservative criticism was summarised by the phrase “circular firing squad”, suggesting that Farage’s proposed investigation could end up turning on members of his own party.
The “Boriswave” argument
The term “Boriswave” is itself a political label used by Reform.
It refers primarily to the increase in legal migration during Boris Johnson’s premiership and the period immediately afterwards.
According to reporting on Reform’s proposal, around 4.8 million legal migrants arrived in Britain between 2021 and 2024. The increase was influenced by several different routes and circumstances, including special schemes for people from Hong Kong and Ukraine and government decisions designed to recruit workers into sectors experiencing shortages.
The political argument is therefore more complicated than simply asking why Britain allowed more migrants to enter.
The post-pandemic labour market created significant recruitment pressures in sectors including health and social care. At the same time, Britain introduced or expanded immigration routes designed to attract workers.
The result was a substantial increase in migration.
Reform argues that the scale of the increase was excessive and that its long-term consequences were insufficiently considered.
The Conservatives, however, can point to the fact that the policies were introduced by a government facing specific economic and labour-market problems at the time.
That disagreement is likely to be central to any future investigation.
The role of Jenrick and Braverman
The involvement of Jenrick and Braverman is particularly significant because both have criticised the immigration policies of their former party.
Jenrick became increasingly critical of Conservative immigration policy before leaving the party. Braverman also repeatedly clashed with successive Conservative leaders over migration and asylum policy.
Farage has used their defections as evidence that senior politicians from the old Conservative establishment now accept Reform’s argument that immigration was mishandled.
The Conservatives see the situation differently.
Their argument is that Reform cannot simultaneously present itself as an entirely new political force while recruiting politicians who were directly involved in the government decisions it now promises to investigate.
That is the basis for the “circular firing squad” attack.
It is a political criticism rather than evidence that an inquiry could not operate independently. A properly constituted inquiry could establish its own terms of reference, determine which witnesses should be questioned and assess evidence irrespective of their current political affiliation.
Could Boris Johnson be questioned?
Reform has explicitly said that Boris Johnson could be required to give evidence.
Yusuf said the inquiry would examine who authorised the policies behind the migration surge and why they were adopted. Reform’s proposal therefore goes beyond simply reviewing current immigration numbers.
It is intended to investigate political decision-making.
There is precedent for former prime ministers giving evidence to formal parliamentary investigations. Johnson himself gave public evidence to the House of Commons Committee of Privileges in 2023 during its investigation into whether he had misled Parliament over statements concerning parties held in Downing Street during the COVID-19 restrictions.
That previous appearance does not mean a future Reform inquiry would automatically have the same powers or procedures.
A national inquiry would need to be established under an appropriate legal framework, with its remit and powers defined in advance.
The precise powers of any Reform investigation would therefore depend on how a future government created it.
The economic argument
The migration inquiry is also closely connected to Reform’s wider economic case against high migration.
Farage and Yusuf have argued that migrants who eventually obtain permanent settlement or citizenship could create substantial long-term costs through access to public services and welfare.
Reform has used a figure of £622 billion for the projected lifetime cost of a particular group associated with what it calls the Boriswave, and has translated that into an estimated cost of roughly £20,000 per household.
Those calculations have been challenged because fiscal projections depend on numerous assumptions.
The Migration Advisory Committee, the government’s independent expert body on migration, has found that the fiscal impact varies significantly between different immigration routes. For example, its analysis of skilled-worker visa cohorts found a positive lifetime net fiscal contribution overall, although it also stressed substantial differences between categories of migrants.
That distinction matters.
It means the question is not simply whether migration costs money or generates money. Different groups can have very different economic effects depending on their employment, earnings, age, dependants and use of public services.
A political battle over responsibility
The Conservative attack therefore exposes a deeper dispute over responsibility for Britain’s migration system.
Reform wants to hold previous governments accountable for the scale of migration that occurred after Brexit.
The Conservatives can respond that the same governments included politicians who are now part of Reform.
Labour, meanwhile, has its own argument: that the migration system inherited by the party after the 2024 election had become too large and required significant reform.
This creates an unusual political landscape in which all three parties can criticise aspects of the system while offering different explanations for how Britain reached its current position.
For Reform, the inquiry would provide an opportunity to establish a historical record and potentially identify individuals and decisions that it believes contributed to the increase.
For the Conservatives, it creates an opportunity to challenge Farage over the record of politicians he has recruited.
For Labour, the controversy provides further evidence that immigration remains one of the defining political issues of the period.
The bigger question
The “circular firing squad” criticism is ultimately about more than the personalities involved.
It raises a legitimate question about how a future inquiry could maintain credibility while examining policies implemented by politicians who subsequently joined the party establishing the investigation.
At the same time, the fact that some former ministers are now members of Reform does not by itself establish that they should be excluded from questioning. An inquiry’s credibility would depend on its terms of reference, independence, evidence-gathering procedures and transparency.
Farage has made clear that he wants the migration debate to move beyond arguments about current numbers and towards an examination of the decisions that produced them.
The Conservatives are equally determined to remind voters that Reform’s current leadership includes politicians who were themselves part of the previous government’s immigration machinery.
That tension is unlikely to disappear.
The proposed “Boriswave” inquiry has therefore become a political argument about both immigration and accountability. Reform says it wants answers about how Britain reached such high levels of migration and who should be held responsible for the decisions involved.
The Conservatives respond that Farage cannot present the investigation as a reckoning with the old political order while simultaneously welcoming several of its former ministers into his own ranks.
Whether the inquiry ever becomes a formal government investigation would ultimately depend on Reform’s political position and its ability to implement the proposal.
Until then, the “circular firing squad” phrase captures the central contradiction at the heart of the dispute: the politicians Farage wants to investigate are, in some cases, now sitting alongside him.