Britain is on the brink of ‘societal collapse’, Nigel Farage warned as he vowed to halve crime in five years if he becomes prime minister.
Reform’s leader claimed people were scared to go to the shops and tourists were staying away from London as a result of soaring muggings and brazen shoplifting.
He also claimed the country was close to ‘civil disobedience on a vast scale’ as a result of alleged crimes by migrants.
Mr Farage defended those protesting outside an Epping hotel housing asylum seekers as ‘genuinely concerned families’ and blamed ‘some bad eggs’ for the violent clashes with police.
Reform’s plan to restore law and order, costing an estimated £17.4 billion over the course of the next parliament, would include recruiting 30,000 more police officers and creating 12,400 extra places in five ‘Nightingale prisons’ built on MoD land.
Derelict council buildings and mothballed police stations would be used to make 100 ‘pop-up’ custody centres and 50 courts would be reopened for ‘fast-track’ trials.
Under a ‘zero-tolerance’ approach modelled on that pioneered in New York, officers would have to investigate every reported offence including shoplifting and mobile phone theft.
Military veterans would be sought to bring about the return of ‘big strapping’ bobbies on the beat whom criminals fear.
Nigel Farage warned that Britain is on the brink of ‘societal collapse’ and vowed to halve crime in five years if he is voted into Downing Street
Mr Farage defended those protesting outside an Epping hotel housing asylum seekers as ‘genuinely concerned families’ and blamed ‘some bad eggs’ for the violent clashes with police
Protestors were seen outside the hotel near Essex on Sunday scuffling with police in the area
To deal with repeat offenders, Mr Farage said those who committed three or more crimes would face life sentences.
And the 10,000 foreign prisoners currently serving time in English jails would be deported, with the Reform leader claiming he was already in talks with Albanian prime minister Edi Rama about taking back his country’s criminals.
Launching a six-week policy blitz on tackling ‘lawless Britain’, Mr Farage said yesterday: ‘We’re actually facing, in many parts of our country, nothing short of societal collapse.
‘People are scared to go out to the shops, scared to let their kids out. That is a society that is degraded, and it’s happening very, very rapidly. Respect for those in uniform has declined massively.
The criminals don’t particularly respect the police and they’re acting in many cases with total impunity.
‘Just as worrying, if not more so, is huge numbers of law-abiding taxpaying Britons have also lost respect for the police in a different way.
The idea, the concept that we’re living in a system of two-tier policing and two-tier justice under two-tier Keir has really taken hold.’
Mr Farage said residents were fleeing the capital as a result of soaring crime, and tourists were reluctant to visit as shoplifting and smoking cannabis become increasingly tolerated.
To deal with repeat offenders, Mr Farage said those who committed three or more crimes would face life sentences
Mr Farage said the 10,000 foreign prisoners currently serving time in English jails would be deported and claimed he was already in talks with Albanian prime minister Edi Rama (left) about taking back his country’s criminals
He said the UK needed to copy the ‘broken windows’ theory popularised by New York mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s, under which crime rates fell after police targeted everything from graffiti to fare-dodging.
‘Reform will be the toughest party on law and order and on crime that this country has ever seen,’ Mr Farage vowed.
‘We will aim to cut crime by half in the first five years of a Reform government. We will take back control of our streets. We will take back control of our courts, of our prisons.’
Reform produced a document putting a £17.4 billion price tag on its plan over five years, but which also claimed ‘the cost of our policies will likely pay for itself’ because of the cost of crime to society.Â
But opponents claimed his blueprint would cost at least £5 billion more, with Tory MP Chris Philp saying: ‘Nigel Farage is writing his own crime fiction.
‘Their own document admits it is unfunded – which means they are not being honest about the price you will pay for their policies, just like Labour.’
The Reform leader said the UK needed to copy the ‘broken windows’ theory popularised by New York mayor Rudy Giuliani (above) in the 1990s, under which crime rates fell after police targeted everything from graffiti to fare-dodging
Tory MP Chris Philp (above) said Mr Farage ‘is writing his own crime fiction’ and said the Reform leader was being dishonest
Mr Farage was asked about a series of protests outside The Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, in the past week after an asylum seeker was charged with three counts of sexual assault.
He said: ‘I don’t think anybody in London can understand just how close we are to civil disobedience on a vast scale in this country.’
He accepted there were some ‘bad eggs that turned up’, including ‘the usual far-Right thugs’, but added: ‘Do I understand how people in Epping feel? You bet your life I do.
‘Don’t underestimate the simmering anger and disgust there is in this country that we are letting in every week, in fact some days, many hundreds of undocumented young males, many of whom come from cultures in which women and young girls are not even treated as second-class citizens.
‘I do understand the genuine upset and anger, and I’ll bet you that most of the people outside that hotel in Epping weren’t far-Right or far-Left or anything like that, they were genuinely concerned families.’
