Farage rows back on pledge to stop small boats within fortnight of election win

Nigel Farage has rowed back on a pledge he made to the party’s conference to stop small boat crossings within two weeks of taking office.

The Reform UK leader had told an audience at the NEC in Birmingham on Friday it would take a fortnight of him entering Downing Street to halt arrivals, if he won an election.

However, he told the BBC that instead it would rely on any Government he led passing laws first.

In an interview due to be aired on BBC One on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, he said the country would need a “legal base” to halt crossings.

He said he would introduce similar laws to those passed by Australian prime minister Tony Abbott over a decade ago to stop arrivals from Indonesia.

Mr Farage told the broadcaster: “As soon as the law is in place. As soon as you have the ability to detain and deport, you’ll stop it in two weeks.”

He had told the conference on Friday lunchtime: “We will stop the boats and we will detain and deport those who illegally break into our country doing what nearly every normal country around the rest of the world does.”

When asked by GB News on Saturday whether he expected any legislation to be passed quickly, given wranglings in Parliament over previous immigration law – he said he was hopeful.

He said: “Given the mood of the nation, the legislation needs to go through as quickly as it’s possible.”

He told Sky News: “We have to get the legislation through as quickly as is humanly possible.”

His comments came on the second day of the party’s conference after Mr Farage had told attendees on Friday to expect a general election in the next two years amid disarray in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

Lucy Connolly will appear on stage at the Reform Party conference on Saturday before Mr Farage closes the event.

The former childminder and wife of a Conservative councillor was jailed for stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers in the aftermath of the Southport murders last year.

She will speak on the main stage of the conference in a special live recording of The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast with Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan, the newspaper confirmed.

Two former Tory ministers were seen at the conference ahead of its finale.

Ann Widdecombe, former Tory Home Office minister who later became a Brexit Party MEP under Mr Farage, as well as Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg – who was Boris Johnson’s Commons leader – were at the NEC.

Sir Jacob took part in a panel event alongside historian Dr David Starkey on how Reform could learn from Donald Trump and be successful in office.

Attendees at the conference passed motions on Saturday, including one that will call for Reform’s immigration policy to be broadened to include a review of asylum approvals by Labour and Conservative governments.

Lancashire county council deputy leader councillor Simon Evans proposed the motion, which would see a review of immigration decisions on potential illegal migrants, where the police national computer and counter terror checks were bypassed.

Similar motions on repealing the 2008 Climate Change Act and removing “gender ideology from public organisations” were unanimously passed.

Nottinghamshire county councillor Kelvin Wright, an NHS critical care consultant for 25 years, said it was “not acceptable for any institution to subvert these spaces”.