Reform’s plan to deploy military personnel in the Channel to deal with migrants trying to cross to the UK is performative, hugely costly and loaded with ugly rhetoric.
That is the opinion of Andrew Fox, a former British Army Major and conflict researcher who now works as a senior fellow at the Henry Jackson Society - specialising in defence, the Middle East and disinformation.
At the start of August, Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, pledged to use the Navy to stop small boats bringing migrants across the channel.
The plan, termed Operation Fortress, was launched by Yusuf and Farage - but was quickly picked apart by defence analysts, veterans and anybody who knows anything about maritime law.
“Military force is not going to be used,” Andrew Fox told The Beacon podcast.
“It’s just a big intimidating gray ship. And you’re basically swapping the RNLI for the Royal Navy.”
This swap would come, he pointed out, at a “huge cost to the taxpayer and a huge operational risk” - with the Navy already stretched thin.
“We know we don’t have enough ships or sailors, we know we have huge threats to the High North,” he said.
“We’re seeing the Strait of Hormuz play out and what happens to the global economy if you have no impact on being able to reopen key arterial waterways.
“The Navy has jobs to do and this is, frankly, not one of them.”
In this podcast episode, we also spoke about Yusuf’s attack on former Ben Wallace, a former defence secretary under Boris Johnson, Suella Braverman’s criticism of the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy and the approach Reform has taken to defence.
