Rick Moore: Spite dressed up as policy – why Reform’s detention centre plan is is wrong on so many levels

Rick Moore is the Deputy Chairman, Political, of Blackburn Conservatives.

I want to deport every single illegal immigrant in Britain. I want a firm border. I want a government that takes the rule of law seriously when it comes to who enters and remains in this country. On that, I suspect I agree with most people who read this publication.

I say this because I want what follows to be understood in its proper context. What Reform UK announced this morning is not a tough immigration policy. It is not even a serious deportation strategy. It is a threat. And it is a threat directed, in part, at children who have no vote, no voice, and no means of protection from the political calculations of adults who claim to speak for them.

The announcement is straightforward enough. A Reform government, the party declared, would site migrant detention centres away from Reform-held constituencies and Reform-run councils. Of the remaining areas, it would “prioritise” Green-held seats and Green-run councils. Vote Reform and you’re protected. Vote Green and you’re targeted.

Reform called this “an important exercise in democratic consent.” I call it something else entirely.

The Logic Collapses Immediately

Let us follow the reasoning to its conclusion, because Reform and its supporters have conspicuously declined to do so.

In every constituency that returns a Green MP, there are people who voted Reform, voted Conservative, voted Labour — people who voted against the Green candidate. Under this proposal, they are punished regardless. A Reform voter living in Brighton Pavilion gets a detention centre on their doorstep because their neighbours outvoted them. That is not democratic consent. That is the majority imposing consequences on the minority in a way that no functioning democracy sanctions.

The reverse is equally true. In every Reform-held seat, there are Green voters, Labour voters, people who actively support more open immigration policies. Under this logic, they receive protection — a benefit they neither sought nor earned through their ballot. The incoherence is total.

But the deepest incoherence, and the one that should trouble anyone with a conscience, is this: children cannot vote. Teenagers cannot vote. They have no say in which party their parents support, which MP their constituency returns, or which council controls their local authority. Yet under Reform’s proposal, they bear the consequences of those choices.

When I raised this on social media this morning, one supporter of the policy asked me whether detainees posed a risk to teenage girls. I said yes, in my opinion, they do. Which is precisely why this announcement both sickens and terrifies me. If you believe, as I do, that there are genuine safeguarding concerns around large detention facilities, then siting those facilities according to electoral spite rather than proper assessment is not just constitutionally offensive. It is a potential child safety catastrophe, produced by political calculation.

This Is Not Democratic Consent

Reform has dressed this up in the language of democracy. It is worth being precise about why that framing is fraudulent.

Democratic consent means accepting outcomes you voted against. It means the winning side governs for everyone, not just for those who supported them. It means the apparatus of the state, its infrastructure, its services, its burdens, is allocated on the basis of need, cost, logistics, and the public interest. Not on the basis of whether a constituency returned the right MP.

What Reform is describing is something closer to clientelism — the allocation of state resources and state burdens based on political loyalty. In mature democracies, this is understood to be a corruption of governance, not a feature of it. In less stable political environments, it is recognised as one of the early signs of democratic backsliding.

Nadine Dorries, a former Cabinet minister, responded to criticism of this policy by saying: “If you vote Green, you are voting for open borders and therefore won’t mind if illegal migrants are housed in your area.” This argument is revealing precisely because it seems, on its surface, almost reasonable. But it dissolves the moment you apply it honestly. It assumes every Green voter holds identical views. It ignores the outvoted minorities in every constituency. And it says nothing whatsoever about the children, the elderly, the people with no vote at all, who simply happen to live in the wrong postcode.

Once elected, you serve everyone. That is not a platitude. It is the foundational obligation of representative government. Reform is explicitly proposing to abandon it.

It Would Not Survive Contact With Reality

There is also the small matter of legality. Infrastructure siting decisions in this country go through statutory planning processes. They are subject to judicial review. A government that attempted to site detention facilities according to electoral outcomes explicitly and on the record, as Reform has now done, would face legal challenge within days. The rationale would be shredded in any competent court. This is not a deliverable policy. It is a campaign stunt.

And campaign stunts have victims too. The 1.1 million impressions this post accumulated in a few hours tells you something about the emotional energy it mobilised. People shared it because it felt satisfying, a comeuppance for the Greens, a reward for the loyal. The fact that it would achieve nothing, help no one, and collapse under scrutiny is beside the point. The vibes are the point. The deportations are secondary.

This is not serious conservatism. Serious conservatism believes in institutions, in the rule of law, in the obligation of government to all its citizens. It does not use the machinery of the state as a reward-and-punishment mechanism for electoral behaviour. Edmund Burke would not have recognised this as conservatism. Neither should we.

Why Conservatives Must Say So

There will be Conservatives, including some who should know better, who will look at the engagement numbers on this post and conclude that silence is the safest response. That engaging with Reform on immigration cedes ground that should not be ceded. That the politics are too complicated.

I disagree. The politics are actually quite simple, if you are willing to state them clearly.

You can believe in firm border control genuinely, not performatively, and still believe that government must serve everyone within its jurisdiction, regardless of how they voted. These positions are not in tension. Only Reform’s version requires you to choose between them.

You can want every illegal immigrant deported tomorrow, as I do , and still recognise that siting detention facilities as electoral punishment achieves nothing except putting vulnerable children near large custodial facilities based on postcode spite. Those two things are perfectly compatible.

The strongest argument against Reform is not that they are too tough on immigration. It is that they are not serious. A real deportation strategy requires legal frameworks, international agreements, processing capacity, and political will sustained over years. What Reform announced today is none of those things. It is a website, a map, and a slogan. “Vote Green, Get Illegals” is not a policy. It is a taunt.

Taunts aimed at children who cannot vote. At families who voted the wrong way. At people whose only crime was to live in the wrong constituency.

If Conservatism stands for anything, it stands for the proposition that the state exists to serve its citizens, every single one of them, not just the ones who voted correctly. We should say so, clearly and without apology.