LONDON — Nigel Farage led the charge for Brexit — but he’s lining himself up for plenty of dealing with Brussels.
The Brexit cheerleader — who sits neck-and-neck with Labour at the top of U.K. opinion polls as his party meets for its annual conference in Birmingham this week — is selling a radical right-wing policy platform ahead of the next U.K. general election, due by late 2029.
But with his sweeping immigration, welfare and education policy pledges likely to butt up against Britain’s post-Brexit agreements with the European Union, Farage has pledged to head to the negotiating table to alter or rip up those deals.
“A Reform government would undo all of this with legislation,” said Farage of the Keir Starmer administration’s reset deal last year. “We’d tell the EU that any agreements are no longer legally binding on the U.K., because a general election has said so. That’s what Brexit was all about.”
“There’s no such thing as a sort of static trade deal,” said Deputy Leader Richard Tice last month. “We’ve got to have the courage to recognize that and work out what’s best for the U.K.”
U.K.-EU reset talks are ongoing under the current Labour government, with another summit due later this year.
Reform would take a different approach if it wins national power.
A Reform UK spokesperson said: “Nigel Farage has vast experience of European politics and the resolve that leaders before him simply did not have.”
POLITICO runs through six Reform UK policy pledges which could trigger a showdown with Brussels.
1. Fishing
Reform is still angry about the post-Brexit settlement for U.K. fishing folk, and has pledged to “recover our quotas” if it wins power.
Farage labeled an agreement to extend fishing rights for the bloc’s fleets in British waters by another 12 years to 2038 at last year’s EU-U.K. reset summit a “surrender.”
“We will stop the selling out of our fishing communities in trade negotiations for cynical horse trading,” a punchy policy document published in May said, laying out plans to renegotiate Starmer’s reset deal and the wide-ranging Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) struck by Boris Johnson in 2020, which is due for review every five years.
2. GDPR
Reform’s Treasury spokesperson Robert Jenrick announced last month that his party would scrap General Data Protection Regulation rules if it wins power.
First introduced by the EU, the regulations became domestic law after Brexit and have since been revised by the U.K. government.
Jenrick says the data sharing rules are still “overburdensome” on businesses — especially the tech sector, and Reform would introduce changes modeled on New Zealand’s lighter touch privacy regime to unleash Britain’s economic potential.
The EU does recognize New Zealand’s laws as adequate — allowing data to flow freely between the two sides.
But a Reform government would have to prove again to Brussels that the U.K. offers a level of data protection comparable to the EU, or risk creating a new hurdle for British businesses trading with the bloc.
3. Small boat crossings
Labour’s “one in, one out” deal with France allows the return of migrants who crossed the English Channel on a small boat to France to be exchanged for an equal numbers of migrants in France who haven’t crossed the channel.
Reform says it would scrap the deal entirely and stop any small boats from reaching British shores. Under the party’s plans, boats would be intercepted and returned to France and Belgium by the Navy or Royal Marines.
The party would try to strike agreements with Paris and Brussels on disembarking migrants at ports —and in its small boats policy paper it argues the far-right National Rally party has indicated it will cooperate.
Farage has “already been engaging with future EU leaders like Jordan Bardella,” the Reform spokesperson said, adding the party will be “ready to hit the ground running” if it wins the next general election.
In the absence of an agreement, Reform said in the same policy paper it will “anticipate and plan for returns without the receiving state’s consent” and believes the “likelihood of tactical confrontation is incredibly low under any scenario.”
4. Welfare
Reform UK announced last month it will ban foreign nationals from claiming almost all forms of welfare — including Universal Credit, free childcare hours and disability benefits — if it wins power.
EU nationals with settled status in the U.K. would no longer be eligible to receive such financial support as the party seeks to reduce the welfare bill by billions.
This would mean reopening the withdrawal agreement with the EU, which set the terms of the U.K.’s orderly exit from the European Union.
Jenrick acknowledged the legal hurdles, but told a press conference in August he’s “confident that we can do that and we can restore fairness in the process.”
5. Student loans
Reform also announced plans in April to stop EU nationals with settled status from accessing student loans. These are repaid when students later earn above a certain salary in employment, while any unpaid balances are written off by the Treasury after a certain time period.
Currently, these students can access financial assistance and pay “home status” fees, which are far cheaper than those paid by international students.
This would be another breach of Britain’s withdrawal agreement with the EU, and Brussels would likely respond by launching dispute proceedings.
6. ECHR membership and the TCA
Reform has made quitting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) a flagship promise, claiming Britain’s departure from the agreement is essential if it is to implement its domestic policies without constraint, such as deporting all migrants who enter the U.K. irregularly.
That appears to breach the wide-ranging Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) Johnson struck with the bloc after Britain left the EU in 2020.
While the ECHR is distinct from the EU, the TCA agrees to the “protection of fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals” in the ECHR.
The TCA also notes the “importance of giving effect to the rights and freedoms in that convention domestically.”
There’s also the Northern Ireland peace agreement to think about. A report by the UK in a Changing Europe think tank published last year says leaving the ECHR would require a renegotiation of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, as the treaty is underpinned by membership of the convention.
Leaving could also cause the extradition of suspects facing trial between the U.K. and EU states to be suspended, given that one ECHR article protects the right to a fair trial.
6 hot-button issues Farage would have to thrash out with Brussels
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