This article is taken from the May 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £5.
“The greatest danger to the Britain we love does not come from Tehran or Moscow. It comes from within,” Sir Ed Davey warned a gathering of his Liberal Democrats on 15 March this year. “From a dark form of politics that wraps itself in the Union Jack while working to undermine everything that flag is supposed to represent.” Then came his punchline, “Of course, I’m talking about Nigel Farage. And Reform.”
A conference hall of party activists may naturally lend itself to partisan rhetoric, but even for the Lib Dems this was punchy stuff. Missed or simply ignored by much of the media, it did not go unnoticed by Zia Yusuf, Reform’s new and re-styled shadow home secretary — a politician widely regarded as not someone naturally inclined to run away from a fight.
It was, he told me, “Abominable. I think the rhetoric is actually expressly designed to whip up violence against Nigel [Farage] and Reform figures. That threat level is very real [and] left-wing figures like Davey spend a lot of time talking about empathy, of which he seems to have little for people in Reform”. Yusuf had not finished. You see Davey “dancing and singing ‘Daddy Cool’ with sunglasses on while the country is going to hell in a handbasket. He’s incredibly out of touch. It’s very much a party for rich people”.
Whilst Yusuf concedes Lib Dems probably don’t wake up “in the morning hoping that senior Reform figures are the victims of violence”, he does worry that many of them “would be pretty ambivalent about it”.
All of this was by way of warm-up, for there were two principal issues I wanted to get Yusuf’s thoughts on: immigration policy as it is and how it would look under a future Reform government, and how such a government could function in the face of a recalcitrant administrative class and legal challenges.
On immigration policy, Yusuf seems more contemptuous of the Conservative Party’s record than that of his current opposite number, the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. The so-called “Boriswave” of predominantly low-skilled migrant workers and their dependents are, he says, “here against the consent and will of the British people”, their presence a “catastrophe” caused by “the Tory government”.
By contrast, he did have conditional praise for Shabana Mahmood. She is “quite a principled politician … she actually believes”, and “frankly, I don’t know why the Tory home secretaries didn’t do some of this stuff”. He approves of her proposed reforms to Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), intended to prevent those admitted in the Boriswave from settling at a projected significant net cost to the taxpayer.
Nevertheless, he has his concerns that “she’s still talking about safe and legal routes and all this stuff. If you’re just taking that 28-year-old Syrian man and moving him from a small boat onto some legal route, I don’t think you’re helping.” In any case, he doesn’t think she’ll last — “the parliamentary party is not willing” and “she’s just totally isolated now in terms of her position and my view is, I think she’ll resign”.
What would a Reform government do about the issue? He promises that the party is “going to abolish ILR altogether” and “replace it with a work visa with a much higher salary requirement”. Only net contributors will be able to get one. Also, foreign nationals won’t be able to receive any benefits.
All those who don’t have the legal right to be in the UK will be deported
It is not just those who came in the Boriswave that he has in mind. All those who don’t have the legal right to be in the UK will be deported. Furthermore, Reform will end the continuing benefit entitlement of those here with EU settled status, “which is about 70 per cent of foreign nationals who are on Universal Credit”.
This would require renegotiating the EU Withdrawal Agreement, and that is a fight he welcomes. “The Tories claimed we were unserious because we would reopen the Withdrawal Agreement, but it was an idiotic agreement to begin with. That part of the deal was a shambles. The Tories completely screwed us and they don’t want to admit they screwed the British people, so they’re saying they would continue to pay [benefits to EU citizens] but that’s not sustainable at all.”
He was equally critical of the Tories’ new positions on migration and crime, saying they’re “now running around super-concerned about all these issues they caused — they were whingeing about violent criminals not getting jail terms, but that’s because [they] brought in six and a half million net new people and built 482 net new prison places”.
But it was when our conversation turned to the Wallacewave, the Afghan resettlements and their cover-up, that Yusuf’s strength of feeling became even more apparent. Speaking about how Ben Wallace, the defence secretary in the Johnson, Truss and Sunak governments “made a conscious decision to endanger and impoverish the British people in service of Afghans”, who “are 20 times more likely to be convicted of sex offences”, his anger was palpable. It was, he claims, “one of the most treacherous actions of any British government in my lifetime. Not only did they do it, but then they kept it secret for no valid reason”.
He also believes the superinjunction that was intended to conceal news of the unintentional leak of the 18,000 Afghans who applied for resettlement was convenient for the Tories. “Rishi Sunak called the General Election very shortly after he learned that the judge had decided the superinjunction would be removed … if the British public had known about this during the General Election, would the Tories have 116 MPs? Probably not.” I think I detect in Yusuf’s voice a note of regret when he continues, “The actual treason laws in this country give governments and ministers very wide latitude — unfortunately, that’s the nature of it.”
As to exactly what Reform would do, Yusuf would not be drawn on the details, limiting himself to promising “a policy response from us in due course” but giving his instinctive view that “I don’t think Britain should be considering asylum applications of any sort for a very long time indeed, not until we’ve got our country back on our feet and British people feel good about this country again.” Asked if that meant no active asylum rights for at least the first full Reform parliament, he replied, “Yes.”
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If Reform do win a majority in 2029, how would they make radical departures of this kind happen? What Yusuf calls his “guiding philosophy” is that “we only get one shot at this”, which requires “doing things that are totally unprecedented” to tackle the country’s “deeply embedded” problems. As an example, he says that Reform will “derogate from every single international treaty that we have … [refusing] to leave anything in place that could be used to injunct deportation flights from leaving”. This applies even if those treaties have names which “make them sound like bad things to derogate from”.
I suggest to him that there will be a great deal of resistance to this approach. He expects opposition from the civil service, in particular “obviously the Home Office”. He says there are “some very good people who work inside the Home Office” but some staff there who “have been briefing the press that they would walk out under a Reform government”. He asks me to:
think about how insane and extraordinary that is. This is the ministry charged with securing and defending our borders, and staff who work there, paid for by the taxpayer, declaring that they would walk out if a government came to power with the express mandate of securing and defending our borders. It’s the most ridiculous thing imaginable. But not surprising, sadly.
If he becomes home secretary, Yusuf’s message to the department will be a simple one: “If we win, we have a mandate, that’s what the British people want. Your job is to help us discharge that duty and deliver on this plan. And if you do, you’re going to get paid more, going to get promoted, going to get recognised, going to get rewarded — you’re going to feel good.”
There is also the stick: “If you’re unwilling though, you should leave immediately. And if you’re insubordinate, you’ll be terminated for gross misconduct and you should not expect your employers’ pension to be honoured.” He is clear in his mind that the moral calculus operates thus: “Why should they get taxpayer money if they’re being insubordinate or working against the interests of the British people?”
What about activist judges, and lawfare? The current and previous Conservative governments faced bruising battles in the courts over their migration policies. Why would it be different for Reform? He expects “a lot of resistance, and judicial reviews … but it’s down to politicians to make the laws. And so the legislation that we’re working on should mean that not even the most activist judge in the country should be able to injunct a deportation flight from leaving. We’ve got to assume there’s always going to be some activist judges [so] we’ve got to deliver as politicians in order to ensure that the will of the people is delivered”.
With this in mind, Yusuf describes the making of legislation as being “like software code” because “if the code is clean, we’re going to be able to do a huge amount in a very short period of time, but if there’s any bugs in the code, then the deportation flights are not going to leave — which is why we’ve got to get that legislation right”.
He gives the example of something he’s working on at the moment: ideas for legislation which would permit the Royal Navy to board dinghies and detain illegal migrants. “People say, ‘Well, what about the laws of the sea?’ — [but] on British waters the only people who should be making determinations are the British government. So, I want to make sure that we clear the decks legislatively to ensure that our Navy is there to discharge its duty and protect our borders.”
Surely the Lords will oppose such an agenda? To this, Yusuf expresses seeming disdain for the upper house, describing it as “packed with David Cameron’s mates and Tony Blair’s mates”. Reform’s plan is to “be honest with the British people about what our plans are. If they give us a mandate, if we win a majority, the Lords will not be allowed to stand in our way or even slow us down.” And when peers resist? “Packing the Lords is on the table as an option, absolutely.”
We conclude our discussion with his expectations for the local elections — in which he hopes for large Reform gains — and beyond. He predicts disaster for Labour: “I think Starmer goes in May and what comes next is Miliband. Something even more left-wing, that is closer to the Greens, [who] are doing to Labour what we did to the Tories.”
Be that as it may, he believes there is hope in the longer term — within the next two or three decades — because “the good news is so many of these problems are totally self-inflicted by moronic politicians. I honestly think Britain could have a new golden age, it really can, but we’ve got to be serious. There’s no point talking about a golden age if our borders are just routinely overwhelmed by and penetrated by unarmed men in dinghies. It’s just embarrassing”.
