The Reform leader has set out his plans for the first 100 days in power (Image: Getty)
Downing Street desirer Nigel Farage has set out his pledges for a first 100 days in power should his party Reform become a government. With rumours rife new Labour PM Andy Burnham may call a snap election to legitimise his rein, and many polls still putting Reform ahead of most of the traditional parties, Mr Farage will make a bullish declaration as his party descend on Birmingham for their annual conference this weekend.
Spelling out his intentions in no uncertain terms, Mr Farage is expected to declare he will force Parliament to sit for seven-day sessions to push forward a storm of legislation he claims will fix the “national emergency” Britain is facing.
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Highest on the agenda for Reform will be an issue which Labour and the Conservatives have both failed to solve for the past decade – illegal migrant small boat crossings in the English Channel. Reform have said they would use the Royal Navy to stop the dinghies, and Mr Farage will claim his party would halt the crossings within 100 days of taking the keys to No10.
Migrants packed on a boat crossing the Channel heading for Britain (Image: Getty)
A raft of cost-cutting measures will also see Reform say they can slash energy bills by £250 a year for an average household by scrapping Net Zero levies and green policies.
A party spokesman told the Mail: “Within days of winning the election we will introduce dozens of Bills and force Parliament to sit all through the summer for seven days a week to pass them.”
According to the Mail, Mr Farage will do “anything and everything to make the first 100 days work”, adding “If the Lords, judiciary or civil service get in our way, they will discover just how determined we are.”
The expected statement of intent from Mr Farage, 62, will come as he addresses the Reform UK conference today (Friday).
Nigel Farage will be addressing the Reform UK conference in Birmingham (Image: Getty)
He will give the first of his two conference speeches on Friday afternoon, in which he will promise to declare a “national emergency” on his first day in government, introducing a flood of legislation and doing “anything and everything” to deliver his party’s policies.
He will say: “Britain is in serious trouble. We don’t have time to wait around to fix it.”
The two-day conference in Birmingham is expected to hear from other senior Reform figures setting out their own pledges for their first 100 days in office, as well as an address from Jordan Bardella, leader of the French National Rally.
Mr Farage is expected to announce that any frontbenchers who fail to deliver on their pledges “will be sacked”.
Meanwhile, party deputy leader Richard Tice is expected to promise to cut environmental levies from energy bills when he makes his own address to the conference on Friday.
By cutting taxes on gas generators, permanently removing VAT from energy bills and scrapping policies including the renewables obligation, feed-in tariffs and the warm homes discount, he will promise to reduce household energy bills by £250.
Nigel Farage’s Plan to Stop Small Boats Within 100 Days of Reform UK in No 10
Nigel Farage has made one of the clearest promises of Reform UK’s emerging programme for government: if the party reaches Downing Street, it intends to stop small boats crossing the English Channel within the first 100 days.
The pledge was unveiled at Reform UK’s conference in Birmingham in September 2026, where Farage attempted to present the party not simply as an opposition movement, but as a government-in-waiting.
Farage said a future Reform administration would declare a national emergency and make stopping small boats one of its first priorities. “We will stop the boats within the first 100 days of government,” he said in his conference speech.
The promise is ambitious. Reform has proposed using the Royal Navy to intercept boats, detain those attempting to cross and return them to France. But the plan also raises questions about international law, French cooperation, military resources and how quickly such a system could actually be implemented.
Operation Fortress
At the centre of Reform’s proposal is a policy it calls “Operation Fortress”.
The party has previously said that the Royal Navy and Royal Marines would be used to intercept small boats crossing the Channel. Reform says those intercepted would be detained, provided with water, food and medical assistance, and returned to France or Belgium under escort.
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s shadow home secretary, presented the proposal as a fundamental change from the current approach.
Under Reform’s plan, the party says the Navy would prevent unauthorised vessels from reaching British shores rather than allowing migrants to arrive in the UK before being processed.
The party has also said the operation would involve a joint military command involving the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, RAF and British Army, together with enhanced surveillance capabilities.
That would represent a major expansion of the military’s role in Britain’s border-control operations.
Reform argues that the objective would be to disrupt the business model of people smugglers by making the Channel route less attractive to people seeking to reach Britain.
A 100-day deadline
The significance of the proposal is not only what Reform wants to do, but how quickly it says it can be achieved.
The party’s conference was explicitly organised around the theme of its “first 100 days” in government.
Farage said ministers would be given specific targets, while reports from the conference indicated that ministers who failed to deliver their pledges within the first 100 days could be dismissed.
Immigration therefore sits alongside other immediate Reform priorities, including reducing energy costs and changing the government’s approach to net zero.
The 100-day timetable is designed to demonstrate urgency.
However, achieving a political decision within 100 days is different from delivering a fully functioning operational system. Military deployments, international agreements, legislation and immigration procedures can involve processes extending beyond a single parliamentary session.
That distinction is likely to become central to the debate over Reform’s proposal.
The agreement with France
Reform has attempted to address one of the most obvious obstacles: France.
On 4 September, Farage and Jordan Bardella, president of France’s National Rally, signed a memorandum of understanding at the Reform conference.
According to Reform, the agreement envisages a future French government led by the National Rally accepting migrants returned by Britain after they have crossed from France.
Reuters reported that the proposed arrangement would involve asylum seekers arriving in Britain from France being detained and returned to France, with France then responsible for repatriating them to their countries of origin. The agreement also referred to mechanisms for sharing border-security costs.
The difficulty is that the agreement is political rather than an existing UK-France government treaty.
For the plan to operate in practice, the governments of both countries would need to cooperate.
That means Reform’s proposed policy is partly dependent on the outcome of French politics as well as British politics.
The legal question
The legal dimension is another major issue.
Reform has insisted that Operation Fortress would comply with international law.
ITV reported that international maritime conventions permit states to rescue people in danger at sea, but do not automatically allow one country to transfer those people to another country without that country’s consent.
This distinction is particularly important in the Channel.
A migrant boat intercepted in British territorial waters could contain people seeking asylum. Any policy of returning those individuals would therefore have to take account of Britain’s obligations under domestic and international law.
Reform’s position is that its proposed arrangements with France or Belgium would provide the necessary framework.
Neither France nor Belgium had endorsed the proposal at the time of the ITV report.
That means the legal and diplomatic details would have to be resolved before the system could operate on the scale Reform envisages.
The military capacity question
Another challenge concerns the Royal Navy itself.
Reform’s proposal has been described by the party as the largest military operation in the Channel since the Second World War.
But former Royal Navy commander Tom Sharpe questioned whether the Navy currently possesses the necessary number of vessels for such an operation.
He argued that Britain’s available naval resources are already committed to other responsibilities, including monitoring Russian naval activity and protecting British waters and infrastructure.
That creates a practical question for any future government.
Even if ministers decided that the Navy should take a larger role, ships would need to be allocated, crews trained, surveillance systems coordinated and rules of engagement established.
A government could order such a policy, but implementing it would require military planning and resources.
The government’s response
The Labour government has rejected Reform’s approach.
When Reform first announced its naval proposal in August, the prime minister’s official spokesman pointed to the Navy’s previous involvement in Channel operations.
The government argued that the Royal Navy had primacy for small-boat crossings under the previous government in 2022, but that this had not produced a reduction in crossings during that period.
The government has instead defended the role of Border Force and international cooperation.
According to the government, crossings had fallen substantially compared with the previous year, while French and British authorities continued working together against people-smuggling networks.
The political disagreement is therefore partly about means as well as objectives.
Both sides say they want fewer dangerous Channel crossings.
The disagreement concerns how that objective should be achieved.
Reform’s wider immigration programme
Stopping the boats is only one part of Reform’s immigration proposals.
At the party conference, Zia Yusuf said a Reform government would also launch what he described as the largest mass deportation operation in modern British history.
The party says people who entered Britain illegally would be removed, while foreign nationals convicted of crimes would also face deportation where legally possible.
Farage has linked these measures to his broader argument that Britain’s immigration system needs fundamental reform.
The party’s position is that successive Conservative and Labour governments failed to maintain effective control of the border.
Opponents dispute that assessment and argue that Reform’s proposals would create significant legal, diplomatic and administrative problems.
The scale of the proposed changes means immigration would likely remain one of the most contentious areas of any Reform government.
Why the 100-day pledge matters
The promise to stop the boats within 100 days is politically significant because it gives voters a specific timetable against which Reform could be judged.
Rather than simply promising to “reduce” crossings, the party has committed itself to stopping them.
That creates a clear test.
If Reform were eventually to form a government, the number of arrivals during its first 100 days would become an obvious measure of whether the policy had achieved its stated objective.
But the timetable also creates a high level of expectation.
The Channel migration system involves Britain, France, asylum law, organised criminal networks, maritime safety and international agreements. Events outside the government’s direct control could affect the outcome.
The question of cooperation
Perhaps the most important factor is France.
Most small boats depart from the French coast. The British government already works with French authorities to prevent departures and disrupt smuggling networks.
Reform’s proposed solution goes further by seeking to return intercepted migrants to France.
For that to happen on a large scale, French authorities would have to accept the arrangements.
The memorandum signed by Farage and Bardella is intended to provide a political framework for such cooperation, but its practical significance would depend on who governs France and what agreements governments subsequently negotiate.
This is why Reform’s promise cannot be assessed solely as a British military policy.
It is also a diplomatic policy.
What happens if Reform reaches No 10?
If Farage became prime minister, the first days of a Reform government would likely involve rapid decisions on migration.
The party has promised to declare a national emergency, deploy military resources against small boats and introduce legislation designed to change Britain’s immigration system.
Farage has also said Parliament would be required to work at an exceptional pace, with MPs potentially sitting seven days a week during the summer to pass his government’s programme.
That reflects the wider philosophy behind the 100-day programme: Reform wants to demonstrate visible change almost immediately.
Whether the government could deliver all of its commitments within that timeframe would depend on parliamentary support, legal challenges, administrative capacity and international cooperation.
A pledge with major consequences
Farage’s promise to stop small boats within 100 days is therefore more than another immigration pledge.
It represents a proposed change in Britain’s approach to border control, giving the armed forces a much larger operational role and making cooperation with France central to the policy.
Reform has provided a clear political objective: prevent unauthorised boats from reaching British shores.
It has also outlined the mechanism it believes could achieve that objective — naval interception, detention and return.
But several important questions remain unresolved, particularly concerning the availability of naval resources, the legal framework for returns and whether France would accept the proposed arrangements.
The party’s conference has made the timetable clear.
If Reform ever enters No 10, the 100-day clock would begin immediately.
The political debate would then move from promises to implementation: whether Operation Fortress could be legally authorised, adequately resourced and supported by France, and whether it could deliver the result Farage has promised — an end to small boats reaching Britain.