Nervousness about Reform

I had a meeting with two colleagues about making changes to our climate modules. This was all within the framework of improving our curriculum on the physical side of the school. And as it so happened, one of them was Swedish and the other one Singaporese. And we strayed a bit from the purpose of the meeting. And we discussed the speech Nigel Farage had held at the Reform conference.

He wanted to change the whole system of indefinite leave to remain (ILR). I think all three of us have that. At least the Swede and I do. The lady from Singapore is a Commonwealth citizen; that might be different. But we all figured our future in the country were uncertain were Reform to do well in the next elections.

I know that his speech, while it did cover people who already have the ILR, excluded EU citizens from this measure. I suppose even Farage realises that if you take away the rights of EU citizens in the UK, what will inevitably happen is that UK citizens in the EU will lose their rights as well. That might not be electorally very productive. But we don't trust the situation.

Another argument against booting foreigners out is that if you were to do that, you basically decapitate the NHS. There are so many foreign citizens in there! And academia would also be severely affected. Maybe that is something Reform voters don't care about, but I'm sure they do care if the NHS collapses in a heap. So a mass deportation of usefully employed foreigners is not likely. But still.

The Swede is quite eligible to apply for UK citizenship, and he doesn't even have to give up his Swedish citizenship for that. But he's not done it; not only because it's very expensive, but also because he said that the UK claims the right to withdraw citizenship from people who are eligible for a citizenship of a different country. And he obviously would be. So he says there is no point in getting it, if someone can take it away as well anyway.

And that is the other thing. If your citizenship can be taken away, surely your ILR can be taken away as well. As much as pissing off all UK citizens living abroad might not be a clever thing to do for a politician, it's not as if UK politicians never do things that are not very clever! None of us feel at ease. Let's just hope that in the next elections, Reform actually does pretty badly. I always hope that, but this is making that hope even stronger!