Reform’s Rupert Lowe announces simple plan to stop small boats to UK

Britain could stop illegal immigration in just three months with tough and determined action, according to Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe.

The former football chairman who has won the praise of Elon Musk is confident that migrants can be deterred from making the dangerous journey – but he is sure the crisis will not have ended by the time of the next election.

“If people come here illegally they need to be detained and deported,” he says, adding: “Do that for three months, you will stop illegal immigration.

“People won’t spend 5,000 euros or whatever it is coming over on a rickety dinghy.”

He also wants foreign criminals sent “back from where they came from” – and he knows how he would compel their home nations to take them back.

“If we’re sending foreign aid to the countries and they refuse to accept them, withdraw the foreign aid.”

He says there is “absolutely no chance” Labour will tackle the small boats crisis in the years leading up to polling day. But he insists he now believes Reform will win that election.

Mr Lowe knows what it is like to take a team to the cusp of victory. When he was chairman of Southampton FC the Saints reached the FA Cup Final in 2003.

He remembers it as one of the best days of his life – but Arsenal won the match 1-0.

Now, the 67-year-old is at the heart of a five-strong squad of Reform MPs who have won a bridgehead in Westminster. This is just the beginning, he says, insisting that the insurgent party will triumph at the next election.

“We’re going to win,” he says.

An overall majority is the goal and there are clear reasons why his confidence is surging.

First, he startled his friends by winning Great Yarmouth from the Tories in the summer election. Then the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, declared on his social network, X, that Mr Lowe talks “a lot of sense”.

And now recent opinion polls have put Reform above both Labour and the Conservatives.

Mr Lowe fears for the future of the UK under Labour, warning of a looming “sterling crisis”.

He blasts the Government for hitting farmers with inheritance tax, warning: “They will sell their machinery; you will get no investment in farming; we will become more and more exposed to food shortages… When sterling collapses we won’t be able to import other people’s food.”

And he condemns the hike in employers’ National Insurance contributions.

“You’re going to see people getting rid of staff,” he says, adding: “These people are scoring own-goals everywhere.”

He is bemused by Sir Keir Starmer’s push for a “reset” of relations with the European Union.

Warning that going back to this “failing socialist post-war experiment” would be a “disaster”, he says: “I can’t for the life of me understand what he’s got in his head other than rocks.”

He shows a similar lack of enthusiasm when discussing the potential for a pact with the Conservatives.

Pointing to Nigel Farage’s decision not to stand Brexit Party candidates in Conservative-held seats and Boris Johnson’s subsequent 80-seat majority, he says: “Tell me what he did with it… He didn’t even do Brexit well.”

He would not rejoice if Mr Johnson decided to join the ranks of Reform, describing the ex-PM as an “abject failure”.

“I think it is extraordinary that Boris is still in the betting to be the next prime minister,” he says. “It’s bizarre. He’s had a play with the toy set and he singularly failed.”

But when he talks about the grassroots support for Reform that propelled him to the Commons he glows with excitement.

“We’ve got to encourage the population to start challenging all of the fetters and the oppression that is being put upon them by people who are supposed to be serving them,” he says. “I say, challenge, challenge, challenge – obviously legally.”

The Home Office insists it is working to stop the small boats crisis.

A spokesperson said: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security. The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay. We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.”

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp condemned the Labour Government for scrapping the Conservative scheme to send illegal migrants to Rwanda.

He said: “I think that plan would have worked because you wouldn’t bother crossing from France to the UK if you knew you had a high chance of being sent to Rwanda… It was a catastrophic mistake that the Labour Government cancelled that Rwanda scheme before it even started.

“The first plane was due to take off on July 24 but they cancelled it before it went. If the Conservatives get back into power we will definitely be looking to implement a removals deterrent where illegal immigrants who arrive here get rapidly removed either to their country of origin or to a safe third country, whether that’s Rwanda or somewhere else.”