You’ve probably seen the news over the past couple of days: Reform has been floating the idea of concentrating people going through the asylum and immigration system into camps, and then deliberately placing those camps in areas controlled by the Greens, as a form of (what they consider to be) political punishment for Green-voting constituencies.

It’s abhorrent. It’s also almost certainly never going to happen, because the cost would be astronomical. But that’s not really the point, and if we stop at “this is outrageous,” we miss what’s actually going on.

First, it’s a distraction. A useful one, too, given that £5 million given to Farage wasn’t declared. Second, and this is the part worth paying close attention to, the legislative agenda sitting behind this proposal is openly published on Reform’s own website, and it’s far more insidious.

So let’s talk about what that legislation actually does.

Reform’s proposed laws wouldn’t just remove rights from asylum seekers or immigrants. They would remove rights from you, regardless of your nationality or immigration status.

The package includes stripping away court oversight of detention, and removing Britain from the ECHR and any international body capable of scrutinising what the government does or protecting individuals from state action. What that means in practice is this: without judicial oversight and without international accountability, a potential Reform government gains the power to detain anyone indefinitely, without charge, and without meaningful legal recourse.

When people hear “camps,” they tend to assume the policy is aimed at someone else: people of other colours, religions, or nationalities. That’s the political framing Reform relies on, but the legal infrastructure they’re proposing doesn’t work that way. Rights removed from one group are rights removed from everyone. A state empowered to detain people indefinitely without oversight is a state empowered to detain you.

I don’t think Farage and most of his party are motivated primarily by racism. I think they want power. I think they find liberal democracy inconvenient, and I think they are perfectly willing to appeal to people who resent minorities in order to build the coalition they need. They hold those voters in contempt - they’re a means to an end. The end is fewer constraints on power.

If you support dismantling democratic safeguards because you dislike other people having rights, you should understand that those safeguards are also the only thing protecting yours.

History has a consistent lesson here. The removal of democratic oversight, the normalisation of indefinite detention, the weakening of independent courts… these things have never, in any country, remained targeted only at the originally intended group. They expand. They always expand.

Indefinite detention in camps, with no court oversight and no international accountability, is not a slippery slope argument, it’s a description of what’s on the table. It deserves to be called what it is, and it deserves to be taken seriously by everyone, whatever their politics.

Transcript:

One of the current bugbears of the Right seems to be solar farms, because obviously they don’t like the idea of energy we make ourselves cheaply. Their main criticism seems to be about the “good quality agricultural land” that’s going to be “wasted”. There’s lots of reasons to argue against that - you can still use the land for agriculture - but there’s one thing I wanted to flag up: solar farms are about 0.1% of land.

Now, there’s something that’s very elitist, and used by very few people, that’s also using agricultural land… but 20 times more than solar farms. Can you think of what that might be? It’s not making clean energy. It’s used almost exclusively by very wealthy people and not very often.

I’ll tell you what it is - golf courses. Golf courses take up about 2% of the land in England completely unproductively.

So, consider what it is you really are objecting to when you’re objecting to solar farms, because to be consistent you should be objecting 20 times more to golf courses.

You might remember some of the really pretty awful things Trump has been saying about Gaza: how he was going to get all the Garzas out and redevelop it as what sounded like a resort of his own. Well… have you seen what he put out on social media just today?

Here are the lyrics:

Donald’s come set you free,bringing delight all to seeNo more tunnels, no more fear,Trump Gaza is finally here.

Trump Gaza, shining bright,golden future, a brand new light.Feast and dance the deal is done,Trump Gaza is number one.

Trump Gaza shining bright,Golden future of brand new light,feast and dance the deal is done,Trump Gaza, number one.

The visuals are worse than the lyrics though - they feature an enormous golden statue of Trump himself in an imaginary beach resort built (presumably) in Gaza. The video ends with Trump lazing in a pool next to Benjamin Netanyahu.

Now, I'm not going to apologise for ripping off and uploading Donald Trump's content. Obviously he didn't create this. It was some… ‘fan’? I don't know. It is clearly AI generated, but he has actively chosen to put it on multiple social media platforms. That’s a lot more than clicking ‘share’.

Just look at the content in that video and tell me that's what you want the president of the USA to be doing. Or thinking.