LONDON: France on Monday condemned a proposal by hard-right Reform UK party to launch, if it wins power, \u201cthe largest military operation\u201d in the Channel \u201csince World War II\u201d to stop migrants crossing on small boats.<\/p>\n
The party\u2019s leader, Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, at a press conference unveiled a policy to deploy Britain\u2019s Royal Navy to return small boats to France.<\/p>\n
But the French interior ministry told AFP that the plan \u201cwould be a violation of French sovereignty as well as a violation of maritime law and international law.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposal comes days after tens of thousands of migrants entered the Spanish territory of Ceuta in north Africa from neighboring Morocco, reigniting Europe\u2019s debate over irregular migration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened in Ceuta over the weekend shows you just how serious this situation is,\u201d Farage told a press conference unveiling the new policy.<\/p>\n
Farage wrote on X that \u201chumanitarian missions do not violate maritime or international law,\u201d and the party defiantly vowed to \u201cstand up for British interests,\u201d whether French President Emmanuel Macron \u201clikes it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hard-right party would need to win the next general election \u2014 not due until 2029 \u2014 to implement the proposal.<\/p>\n
They come as Farage and Reform \u2014 which led national polls for around 18 months but have seen that lead disappear in recent weeks \u2014 are embroiled in a series of scandals and official probes into their finances.<\/p>\n
In the latest, parliament\u2019s standards commissioner said on Monday he had last week opened an investigation into an alleged \u201cfailure to declare\u201d a financial interest by the party\u2019s deputy leader, Richard Tice.<\/p>\n
The commissioner was already probing Farage for a separate alleged parliamentary rules breach. But that was suspended when the Reform head resigned as an MP to trigger a by-election next week that he is contesting.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, London police have confirmed launching a probe in February last year over donations to Reform ahead of the 2024 general election, following a referral from the Electoral Commission watchdog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: France on Monday condemned a proposal by hard-right Reform UK party to launch, if it wins power, \u201cthe largest military operation\u201d in the Channel \u201csince World War II\u201d to stop migrants crossing on small boats. The party\u2019s leader, Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, at a press conference unveiled a policy to deploy Britain\u2019s Royal Navy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101231,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101219"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101235,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101219\/revisions\/101235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}