Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage is leading opposition calls for stricter immigration policies amid national unrest triggered by a Sudanese migrant’s attempted beheading of a local in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Belfast, a city historically scarred by sectarian violence, experienced some of its worst rioting in years on Tuesday, this time against immigration. Organized groups masked and clad in black launched organized attacks against migrant housing, public transportation, and police. It was the city’s third major anti-immigration riot in three years, with the last occurring exactly one year prior.
As prominent British figures dashed to condemn the violence, opposition leaders have portrayed the unrest as an inevitable outcome of the Labour Party government’s immigration and social policies. Much of Reform UK’s calls have been broad demands to restrict immigration, but several specific policies have been pushed after the attempted beheading on Monday.
On Wednesday, Reform demanded that the United Kingdom implement a blanket ban on visas from Sudan.
“A Reform government will issue a ban on visas for anyone from Sudan,” Farage said in a statement. “Immigration policies championed by the Tories and Labour have led to horrific consequences. Consequences which are unfolding every day before our eyes. A man was almost beheaded in Belfast. This was imposed upon the British people. Nobody voted for this.”
Reform UK Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf said a Reform government would “deport all illegal migrants, and abolish Indefinite Leave to Remain,” a policy in the U.K. that allows immigrants to live, work, and study in the country as long as they’d like, in addition to getting access to public benefits. Reform U.K. has previously outlined its plans to replace ILR with a five-year renewable visa.
“Prime Minister Farage will reverse the invasion and ensure you no longer have to endure the horrors seen in Belfast” on Monday, Yusuf said.
The alleged attacker is believed to have traveled from Sudan first to Paris, then Dublin, and then Belfast, where he applied for asylum and was granted limited leave to remain, a five-year renewable refugee status.
Reform UK said Wednesday that the Belfast attack was the “kind of case that exposes the terrifying reality of Britain’s broken borders” and that the party was the only one “offering serious solutions to this.”
“The political choice is brutally clear,” the party added. “The Conservatives and Labour built and are maintaining this status quo. Only Reform will tear it down.”
The other main call from Reform after the Monday attack was for greater transparency around the case, part of a wider call for transparency around migrant crime.
“We’re not stupid,” Reform Deputy Leader Richard Tice said Tuesday. “We’ve got eyes. We’ve got ears. We know what’s going on, and we can tell when information is being withheld from us.”
Tice directly challenged Prime Minister Keir Starmer on the floor of Parliament on Wednesday. After condemning the Tuesday violence in Belfast, he said Starmer was “in denial of the rising despair” across the U.K., which he credited to his “failure to stop the boats and associated criminality,” referring to illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel.
Starmer responded by accusing Farage and Reform of attempting to weaponize the attempted beheading on Monday for their own gain, a charge he has leaned on over racial unrest over the past week.
Reform has also turned its attention to the national security implications of mass immigration, after Jonathan Hall, the U.K.’s independent terrorism watchdog, said violence from new immigrants had become a national security issue. The Monday attempted beheading in Belfast was “extraordinarily destabilizing” and had “huge ramifications,” he said.
“HUGE,” Tice said in a post on X. “Migration is a national security issue, says Govt terror watchdog. Lab & Tory political class have gaslit the British people, only Reform can be trusted to treat migration as a national security issue.”
Reform has surged in popularity largely over its strict stance on immigration, with the policy section on its website reflecting the issue’s prominence in its thinking. The first four listed policies revolve around the issue, with the most concrete being its “clear and uncompromising plan” to deport all illegal immigrants from the U.K., a plan it dubs Operation Restoring Justice.
The plan includes a five-year emergency program to identify, detain, and deport all illegal immigrants in the country, and London’s exit from treaties supporting mass immigration. Reform UK promises to repeal the Human Rights Act, which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law and has been used by migrants to challenge deportation orders. In its place, the Illegal Migration Act would bar any illegal immigrants from claiming asylum.
“We will establish a UK Deportation Command and use all the available levers of the state to identify illegal migrants and deport them, including rapidly building Secure Immigration Removal Centres with capacity for up to 24,000,” the website reads. “The Foreign Office will secure return agreements with other countries as a matter of priority and up to five deportation flights per day will be chartered by the Home Office.”
The Labour government has largely focused its response to the Monday attack on appealing to the public to stay calm, then denouncing attempts to shift the national conversation to immigration.
In one particularly criticized response, Traditional Unionist Voice MP Jim Allister questioned Labour Northern Ireland Secretary of State Hilary Ben over the attack. Allister asked, “What will be done to stop the importation of an alien culture that thinks it’s appropriate to try and behead someone?”
RIOTS CONSUME BELFAST OVER ATTEMPTED BEHEADING BY SUDANESE IMMIGRANT
Ben responded by taking offense at his terminology.
“I’m sorry the honorable gentleman used the term ‘alien culture’, because what exactly is he referring to?” he said.