Nigel Farage has denied that a Reform UK government would authorise lethal force against migrant crossings in the Channel, hours after one of his MPs said the Royal Marines should be permitted to fire on the boats. Robert Jenrick, a Reform UK MP who defected from the Conservatives, had told TalkTV that the party would deploy the Royal Marines to take boats back to France. 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”. That’s what he was saying,” he said. 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 take military action against civilians,” Pollard told Times Radio. We can all see what this is: an attempt to distract from Reform’s internal woes.”
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