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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we are going to do, and we\u2019re the only political party that has the courage to say this, is deploy the Royal Marines into the Channel. If they need to use lethal force, then they\u2019ll be able to do so,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cutterly misconstrued\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnybody wearing British military uniform who gets fired at has the right to respond. That\u2019s what he was saying,\u201d he said. \u201cRemember, in these camps, every week there are shootings, there are stabbings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are dealing here with very, very serious international criminal organisations, and what we\u2019re saying is, we will, if we win the next election, pick these people up and take them back to France.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a possibility that initially that might be met with some force. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jenrick had said that allowing the use of force would mean the problem would end \u201cin just a few days.\u201d He said using force was \u201cobviously not what we want to see happen\u201d, adding: \u201cWe want to see these individuals picked up off the boats in a sensible and reasonable way, and taken straight back to France.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defence minister Luke Pollard called the comments \u201cdisgusting and illegal\u201d, and said that the armed forces were not allowed to accept \u201can illegal order\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not shoot unarmed civilians. We do not take military action against civilians,\u201d Pollard told Times Radio. \u201cThe idea of this is a soundbite designed by Reform to distract from their sleaze and their scandal \u2026 it\u2019s abhorrent to military values, it\u2019s abhorrent to British values.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think anyone should give this any truck. We can all see what this is: an attempt to distract from Reform\u2019s internal woes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigel Farage has denied that a Reform UK government would authorise lethal force against migrant crossings in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-801167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}