Nigel Farage has denied that a Reform UK government would authorise lethal force against small boat crossings in the Channel, hours after one of his MPs said the Royal Marines should be permitted to fire on the boats.
Farage overruled Robert Jenrick, a Reform UK MP who defected from the Conservatives, who had told TalkTV that the party would deploy the Royal Marines to take boats back to France.
In a day of party splits where a poll showed the party had fallen to third place behind the Conservatives, the Reform UK chair, Zia Yusuf, also suggested he would not trust Conservative defectors such as Jenrick – and criticised another Reform MP Suella Braverman for her suggestions that she could not be considered English because of her ethnicity.
The initial row was sparked by Jenrick saying his was the only party prepared to use force against people crossing in small boats. “What we are going to do, and we’re the only political party that has the courage to say this, is deploy the Royal Marines into the Channel. If they need to use lethal force, then they’ll be able to do so,” he said.
But speaking on LBC, Farage said he would not authorise routine use of force, that it would be used only if soldiers were fired at, and that Jenrick was being “utterly misconstrued”.
“Anybody wearing British military uniform who gets fired at has the right to respond. That’s what he was saying,” he said. “Remember, in these camps, every week there are shootings, there are stabbings.
“We are dealing here with very, very serious international criminal organisations, and what we’re saying is, we will, if we win the next election, pick these people up and take them back to France.
“There is a possibility that initially that might be met with some force. If it is, force will be met with force. But I tell you something: within two weeks of boats being taken back to France, the boats will stop coming.”
Jenrick had said that allowing the use of force would mean the problem would end “in just a few days”. He said using force was “obviously not what we want to see happen”, adding: “We want to see these individuals picked up off the boats in a sensible and reasonable way, and taken straight back to France.”
The defence minister Luke Pollard called the comments “disgusting and illegal”, and said that the armed forces were not allowed to accept “an illegal order”.
“We do not shoot unarmed civilians. We do not take military action against civilians,” Pollard told Times Radio. “The idea of this is a soundbite designed by Reform to distract from their sleaze and their scandal … it’s abhorrent to military values, it’s abhorrent to British values.
“I don’t think anyone should give this any truck. We can all see what this is: an attempt to distract from Reform’s internal woes.”
Yusuf, who himself has previously promised that “lethal force” would be used to stop migrants on boats reaching Britain, also rowed back on the comments on Tuesday. But he said on BBC Breakfast that it would only be used “in extremely limited circumstances where it is necessary to protect innocent life”.
“In the event there are people on those boats with weapons, with firearms, who think nothing of shedding innocent life, throwing people overboard, we need to be ready to respond.”
But Yusuf also opened up a new splits with Jenrick and with Braverman – a former Conservative home secretary – in interviews on Tuesday. Asked if he still considered them to be “quislings” because they had been part of a Tory cabinet, as he had once posted on X, Yusuf told Sky News: “Everybody in that Conservative government – that did things that were not only damaging to the country, but were literally the opposite of the things that they promised to do – need to take responsibility for that.
“I was looking on, as the Tories claimed they were going to cut immigration to the tens of thousands and then did the complete opposite. And I do think there is collective responsibility for that.”
He said he did not agree with controversial comments made by Braverman that her south Asian heritage meant she was not English. “In my view Ashley Cole is the best English fullback in history, and I won’t take any other position. So in my view, Ashley Cole is English. The argument that he’s not English doesn’t hold water with me,” he said.
“I do think it is important that we listen to people who are worried about some of the demographics in this country. I think that there are some legitimate arguments that they can make about that. But I will also say … whether it’s [Bukayo] Saka, Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Nasser Hussain, who I grew up watching when I went to the cricket, the idea that those people aren’t English is an alien concept to me. I would respectfully disagree with people, who make the opposite argument.”
A new poll for the Times on Tuesday showed Reform UK had dropped to third place behind Labour and the Tories, in a boost for Kemi Badenoch’s party, which has its highest rating since she became Tory leader.
