A threat to place migrant detention centres in Green-voting areas if Reform UK wins the next general election has been backed by the party’s local representatives.
“We’d have no other option,” said Coun Dave Poole, chairman for Reform in the Staffordshire Moorlands.
The threat came in a social media post by Reform UK’s spokesperson for home affairs, Zia Yusuf, who said detention facilities would not be placed in any area that had elected a Reform MP or where the party controlled the council.
The post said: “Of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green-controlled Parliamentary constituencies and Green-controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
“Put simply, if you vote in a Reform UK council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you. If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.”
The post drew criticism from across the political spectrum. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch reposted a message on X from former business secretary Simon Clarke, which said: “We need to stop illegal immigration, but this is abhorrent from Reform.
“Zia is proposing the siting of detention centres expressly as a form of political punishment for people and places that don’t vote Reform – not just Green, but presumably Conservative, Liberal and Labour too. (And what about Reform voters in those constituencies?)
“It would almost certainly be deemed an abuse of ministerial power for political purposes, and as such would likely be struck down in court before ever being implemented, wasting millions for the taxpayer without detaining anyone.”
Coun Poole, who also sits on Sandbach Town Council, said that if Reform won an overall majority nationally but the Congleton constituency elected a Green MP, voters would have to accept the policy.
He said: “That’s democracy; you vote Green, you get Green policies. It wouldn’t be my place to fight against it, we’d just have to accept it.”
But Martin York, who ran against MP Sarah Russell in the last general election, said there was “more chance of snowballs existing in hell” than Congleton electing a Green MP.
He said: “I certainly do not want (a detention centre) in Congleton, but it’s not going to happen. Congleton is not going to vote for a Green council or a Green MP. There are a lot of people following them at the moment, particularly the younger generation, but I don’t think it’s going to last.”
Coun Reg Kain, the only Reform UK member on Cheshire East Council, said he believed Mr Yusuf’s comments were intended to highlight what he called the “hypocrisy” of Green voters.
He said: “I wouldn’t be in support of any (migrant detention centres) because I believe they should be immediately deported. We should have robust customs checks at the borders. People are only coming across in boats because France lets them.”
Asked whether he felt the comments were designed to scare people into voting for Reform, he said: “It does sound like a threat, but it’s an attempt to highlight the hypocrisy of other parties. It’s about using a stance to gain media coverage. People might vote Green, but they don’t want open borders.”
Alsager Town Coun Richard McCarthy, who ran as the Green candidate at the last general election, said his party did not have an open-border policy.
Wrong
He said: “Reform UK seems to be getting our policies completely wrong, which isn’t a surprise for Reform, because it gets a lot of things wrong.
“They don’t present the facts to people properly. Rather than trying to understand them, they’re using them to slag us off – hopefully the public can see that.”
He described Mr Yusuf’s proposal as “Trumpian” and said it echoed comments made by former Conservative leader Rishi Sunak in 2022, when he said he planned to pour more money into “levelling-up” areas that voted Conservative.
In a leaked video reported by the “Independent” at the time, Mr Sunak said: “We inherited a bunch of formulas from Labour that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas (which did not vote Conservative) and that needed to be undone. I started the work of undoing that.”
Mr McCarthy said: “It’s trying to worry people and warn them off from voting for other parties. It’s all about fear, once again. That’s all Reform knows about how to campaign, and that’s a shame.”
He explained that the Green Party advocated for the abolition of migrant detention centres. Those seeking asylum, he said, would be integrated into the community and given jobs so they could contribute to society while waiting to see if their immigration status was granted or denied. He said: “Dealing with Reform UK is like handling children at school who can’t behave – but these are adults in a political party which has far too much money.”
He agreed with a comment made by Green leader Zack Polanski that politicians should be forced to wear the names of their sponsors on their shirts, like footballers. He said: “Do we really want somebody who lives abroad paying to decide what policies we have in this country?” he said, referring to crypto tycoon Chakrit Sakunkrit – previously known as Christopher Harborne before he naturalised in 2011. He has given more than £22 million to Nigel Farage’s political parties.
