Nigel Farage reveals plan to make Britain a world power again – and protect UK from Iran

The threats to Britain are no longer abstract. Lone-wolf terrorists and state-sponsored actors, many of them working at the behest of the Islamic Republic in Tehran, are entering our homeland through porous borders. I have warned about this for years, only for my concerns to fall on the deaf ears of a complicit political class.

Britain’s role in the world has been diminished over decades. But the power we once projected across the globe does not have to give way to the establishment doctrine of managed decline. On national and international security, Reform UK has a plan to put Britain back in the driving seat at home, in our region and around the world.

Being respected abroad starts at home. A nation that cannot police its own backyard, namely its borders, will hardly be taken seriously on the global stage. That is why our new National Security Review, headed by our new Shadow Armed Forces Minister and 40-year military veteran Angus MacIntyre, makes border security Reform UK’s top-tier priority.

But Britain’s national security does not end at the 12-mile line.

Today, perhaps more than at any time in our lifetimes, our moral and practical involvement is central to the security of the Euro-Atlantic region. Our allies still look to our once formidable military. Our adversaries pray that the same political class stays in power, so that we never reassert ourselves, properly fund our armed forces, or rebuild our defence strategy from the ground up. But we must, and Reform UK will.

That means spending 3 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030 and 3.5 per cent by 2035, and paying for it partly by putting a hard £1 billion cap on our foreign aid budget. But it cannot mean simply hurling money at the same flawed MoD procurement processes that have left our forces threadbare. We need an era-defining shift in our priorities: for our nuclear deterrent, for our undersea defence, and for a future full of cyber and space-based threats.

At home, we must ban the Muslim Brotherhood.

Abroad, we must use our UN Security Council veto in pursuit of explicitly British interests. Alliances must be founded on the mutual pursuit of freedom and strengthened by intelligence sharing and secure common supply chains.

The old political fixations on the European Court of Human Rights, the International Criminal Court and the Refugee Convention no longer reflect the priorities of ordinary Britons. In many cases they are performative, and often harmful to our sovereignty. That is why Reform UK will leave the ECHR, repeal the Human Rights Act, disapply the Refugee Convention, and refuse to let any international court override British law.

Our approach also puts peace, and our ability to deliver it, back on the agenda. Our world is riven with conflict, whether between Russia and Ukraine, between America and Iran, or further afield. We have the potential to become a true power for peace. If shipping lines are open, prices come down. If bombs aren’t dropping, energy prices are lower. But to do that we have to stare down those who would weaken us, and make them realise that we will not allow our national infrastructure to be targeted.

Vladimir Putin sees our weaknesses and exploits them. Our airports, hospitals, energy, food security and wider infrastructure are off limits. More than that, we will invest heavily in them to ensure that any and all attempts to attack us fail.

These foundations of everyday life are chronically vulnerable. In so many ways, we have placed global “well-being” above our own. We have promoted diversity, equity and inclusion overseas, at great cost, while neglecting our own national prosperity and strength.

The Falklands are British. The Chagos are British. Gibraltar is British. And no, we will not pay reparations to anyone, ever.

We must be far more wary of Communist China. Put simply, its lust for Taiwan could crash the entire global economy. Britain has to be at the forefront of ensuring that never happens.

We need an immediate sea change in our mentality, and that can only come at the ballot box, through consequential political change at home.

To help bring peace abroad, we must build strength at home. You cannot simply declare yourself a world power; you have to create one. That comes through hard-headed, pro-British policies that show the world, and above all our enemies, that we mean business. It also means committing ourselves, as a nation, to upholding our sovereignty, protecting our people at home and abroad, and securing the conditions for prosperity by actively promoting British business and inward investment.

Reform UK rejects the idea that we must be a nation in decline. We can be a nation on the rise once again. Not just for our own benefit, but because of something I know most Britons agree on: the world is a better place when Britain is a better place, a safer place when Britain is safer, and a more peaceful place when Britain is at its best.