Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick became unstuck when questioned about his party’s mass deportation plans. As commentators Mukhtar and Saul Staniforth highlighted, however, the focus on cost is frankly disgusting given the human element:
Trevor Philips is a weird guy. https://t.co/qMcp4Dw9Je
— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) May 24, 2026
Reform — the cost
Host Trevor Phillips put the following to Reform’s Robert Jenrick:
[Zia] Yusuf wants to deport 1 billion illegal immigrants. That’s the number he says. The cost of each enforced return at the moment is about £49,000, which means that the cost of your deportation programme would work out at £50 billion. £10 billion a year. Straightforward arithmetic, the cost, it’s ONS numbers, £49,000 apiece. Are you going to stump up £10 billion each year for sending people back home?
The problem with putting things in cost terms is that people don’t really give a shit about the price if they agree with the policy. People on the left think we should fund the NHS no matter what; people on the far-right think the same about deportation.
Providing a more human perspective, Richard Sanders of Double Down News said:
Reform is proposing the deportation of 2 million people – including people legally here.
“Politically it feels quite clever doesn’t it,” says Trevor Phillips, and leads a discussion that revolves entirely around whether it is affordable and practical.
These are people who sweep our streets, look after disabled people, keep the care sector functioning. People who work incredibly hard and are invariably very badly paid. People who have families, lives, hopes, dreams. Without whom the economy simply wouldn’t function.
This country has arrived at an appalling place.
Back to the cost, our own Rose Cocker wrote:
We’ll leave aside for a moment the absolutely dire racism and xenophobia of any Reform ‘promise’. That’s basically a given at this point.
Rather, this proposal is bloody ridiculous on a purely practical level – and it illustrates one of the many (many) massive problems with these authoritarian jerks.
As Cocker highlighted, the plan is “un-costed” and “eye-wateringly complex”. As far as we can tell, this complexity doesn’t result from the plan being well-thought out, but from it being completely unconsidered.
Reform will say anything
Jenrick is also attracting attention because of a resurfaced video:
It would be a shame if this video was shared far and wide.
Do you really want these charlatans running the country?! pic.twitter.com/0VoO8J9Cl0
— Cllr Scott Cameron (@CllrScottC) May 24, 2026
In the above, Farage says:
You might have seen pictures of Robert Jenrick turning up outside the Bell Hotel, the migrant hotel in Epping in Essex. And what he’s saying is, “I’m on your side. I’m with you, the people. What’s going on is a disgrace.” Well, when he was immigration minister just a couple of years back, it was very, very different. Here he is boasting that he’s going to open more migrant hotels than all the ministers that went before him.
The video then cuts to a clip of Jenrick saying:
We have procured more hotels very rapidly and more are coming on board literally every day. More hotels have been coming online almost every month throughout the whole of this year. So, Suella Bravman and her predecessor Priti Patel were procuring more hotels. What I have done in my short tenure is ramp that up and procure even more.
Farage returns to say:
Yes, that was Robert Jenrick, and under him, as immigration minister, we got up to 56,000 people who’d crossed the Channel by boat living in hotels. He put more people in hotels than even this Labour government. And here we are three years later and he turns up and says, I’m on your side. My advice to you would be to say this man is a fraud. This man is not to be trusted and certainly his party aren’t either.
What this demonstrates is that neither men take this issue seriously; really it’s just a political football to them.
If Jenrick cared, he wouldn’t have flipped his position so easily when it became convenient. If Farage cared, he wouldn’t have accepted Jenrick into Reform.
Putting things into perspective, John Ranson wrote for the Canary:
Currently, to apply for asylum in the UK, you have to get here first. Among a range of appallingly risky options, coming by boat seems like one of the better ones. I know it’s not something I’d do for a laugh. I doubt I’d even be capable of managing it. I had enough trouble with a Dorsetshire picnic cruise. And a single tube journey left me in bits. So the thought of making a journey of thousands of miles with small kids, culminating in running the Channel gauntlet on a glorified lilo, isn’t something I can even contemplate.
The people who make these crossing are brave; the cowards who run Reform UK aren’t even brave enough to stand by their own convictions.
Predictable
The sad truth in all this is that Labour politicians may one day try to copy Reform’s plan – as evil and costly as it is. After home secretary Shabana Mahmood spoke about the “divisions” caused by migration, the Canary’sMaryam Jameela wrote:
First of all, these “divisions” – a watering down of the terrifying racism permeating our streets – are not happening becausemigration is an issue. They’re happening because politicians like Shabana Mahmood weaponise the very very few people that seek asylum in this country in an effort to appeal to racist voters.
She added:
They’re not people who are merely ‘concerned’ about “divisions” from migration. Do you think these people give a fuck about the statistics on how few asylum seekers actually come to this country? Do you think they’ll actually vote for Labour politicians desperately trying to court them? Will they fuck.
Jameela’s prediction has proven to be entirely correct. On 21 May, Starmer announced:
Net migration has fallen 82%.
I promised to restore control to our borders. My government is delivering.
I know there’s more to do, we’re introducing a skills-based migration system that rewards contribution and ends our reliance on cheap overseas workers.
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) May 21, 2026
The reason this is doing nothing for Labour or Starmer’s popularity is that it was never about where people came from; it was always about what they look like. And as long as there are minority groups living in Britain, there will be craven politicians finding ways to demonise them.
Unsurprising
It’s no mystery why some voters are drawn in by anti-migrant rhetoric. As the Canary’sNandita Lal reported:
the Resolution Foundation found that Britain’s living standards slowdown over the past 20 years meant that families had suffered £20,000 of lost living standards growth over that period.
The narrative of fiscal scarcity used by mainstream parties to justify welfare cuts while military spending soars, is a political choice that deepens the very inequalities fuelling the far-right.
The poorer Britons get, the easier it is to convince some of us that refugees and migrants are to blame. But we cannot allow human beings to serve as pawns in the political games of bankers and chancers like Farage and Jenrick.
Featured image via Sky News
By Willem Moore
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