UK Politics
‘The Boriswave Must Be Reversed’: Farage Vows to Review Every Citizenship Granted After Mahmood’s U-Turn
Nigel Farage says Reform would review every citizenship granted after Mahmood’s U-turn on settlement rules and revoke it if people don’t benefit Britain.
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Should a Reform government review every citizenship granted after Mahmood’s U-turn?
News | By Matt, Editor
Nigel Farage has vowed that a Reform UK government would review every British citizenship granted as a result of Shabana Mahmood’s climbdown on settlement rules, and strip it from anyone who does not “unambiguously benefit Britain”.
The Reform UK leader made the pledge at a press conference in central London on Monday afternoon, held at the same time as the Home Secretary set out her new rules in the Commons (BBC News). He called her announcement “a very major U-turn” and “the beginning of the capitulation”.
Key facts
- Reform says it would review citizenship granted to people who came on care visas and benefited from Monday’s U-turn (Reform UK statement).
- It would make people wait at least 10 years before they could apply for citizenship.
- Anyone who lost citizenship would have to apply for a new five-year visa, which Reform says would replace indefinite leave to remain, the right to settle here for good.
- Reform claims 205,000 people who came on the Health and Care visa will be able to become British before the next election, at a lifetime cost of over £50 billion. That is Reform’s own estimate.
- Ms Mahmood told MPs that care workers who arrived before May 2025 and earn at least £25,000 can now settle after five years, not the 15 she first proposed (The Independent).
What Farage said
Mr Farage told reporters: “Normal countries don’t give out work visas, allow you to bring dependents, automatically give you indefinite leave to remain, and then one year later citizenship. We are uniquely stupid in doing this, and we’ve been uniquely stupid in doing this for far too many years.”
Have your sayTap to commentHe went on: “Our position is very, very clear: Anybody under this scheme that’s been opened today, and I believe today is just the opening of the door, anybody that goes through to [settlement] and citizenship under this scheme, we will review each and every single one of those citizenships if they are granted” (The Guardian).
He said it “goes against the grain of everything that British citizenship is supposed to have meant over the centuries”. He would not say how many people would be affected. “Is it a quarter of a million? Is it the first quarter of a million? Does it open the door to legal challenges, and many, many others? We will see,” he said (GB News).
He also accused Ms Mahmood of having “kicked the can down the road” and said the change would cost the country “a vast amount of money” (BBC News).
In Reform’s written statement, he added: “Shabana Mahmood has shown her true colours: she talked a big game on immigration but has u-turned at the first sign of trouble from her left wing Labour colleagues.”
Yusuf: ‘Hang her head in shame’
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s shadow home secretary, stood alongside Mr Farage. He would be the minister in charge of any review. “As Home Secretary I will review every citizenship granted to Boriswave migrants as a result of Burnham’s U-turn today,” he wrote afterwards. “Those not significantly contributing to the British economy will have it revoked.”
“Boriswave” is Reform’s name for the sharp rise in arrivals after Brexit, under Boris Johnson’s Government, when net migration hit record levels.
In the party statement, Mr Yusuf said: “Shabana Mahmood should hang her head in shame. This is a complete betrayal of the British people who have voted time and time against mass immigration.” He also said the Conservatives “let in over 4.8 million people from 2021-2024”.
The rest of Reform’s top team
Robert Jenrick, Reform’s shadow chancellor, said Ms Mahmood had “been humiliated”. “She talked the talk on migration but under pressure from Labour minsters, she’s backed down,” he wrote. He said Britain had been “set on a path to a permanently changed country”.
Deputy leader Richard Tice called it a “BETRAYAL” and said the Home Secretary had “cowardly” caved in. “Tories started this madness. Labour accelerating it,” he wrote.
Suella Braverman, Reform’s education spokesman and a former Conservative Home Secretary, said that morning that the Boriswave “was the greatest betrayal by the last Conservative government. It’s why I left the Conservatives.”
We found no posts on the announcement by Reform chairman Lee Anderson by 6.40pm. We could not find active X accounts for Danny Kruger or Sarah Pochin.
What Mahmood says
The Home Secretary insists her rules are tough. Most people will now wait 10 years to settle, not five, and those who came by small boat face up to 30 years. She told MPs that “half a million people, 500,000 people, will settle later as a result of these reforms”, and that the Department for Work and Pensions says billions will be saved on benefits (The Guardian).
For the Conservatives, Chris Philp called it “a U-turn” that would cost taxpayers £10 billion (The Independent). For the full detail of the new rules, read our report on what Mahmood announced on Monday.
Reform’s plan would face a legal fight. Under the British Nationality Act, the Home Secretary can only strip citizenship in narrow cases, such as fraud or where it is “conducive to the public good”, so new laws would be needed. When Reform first set out plans to scrap settlement last year, immigration lawyers told The Independent that the courts were likely to block changes made after the event.
Our view
This section is opinion.
On Sunday we reported that Labour was preparing to climb down, and on Monday morning that the U-turn was coming. It came. The Home Secretary who called low-skilled settlement “an affront to the idea of fairness” has now opened the door to it.
Reform has given voters a clear choice. Whether a citizenship review would survive the courts is a fair question, and Reform must show its sums. But the public never voted for this scale of migration. This is a Prime Minister who could not say whether migration is too high, while 10,000 people have crossed the Channel since he took office and a watchdog says people with no right to work can sue their bosses.
Should a Reform government review every citizenship granted after Mahmood’s U-turn? Vote in our poll below.
Sources
- BBC News live, 2 November 2026
- The Guardian politics live, 2 November 2026
- The Independent (PA), 2 November 2026
- GB News, 2 November 2026
- Reform UK statement on X, 2 November 2026
- The Independent, September 2025
- British Nationality Act 1981, section 40
- Posts on X by Nigel Farage, Zia Yusuf, Robert Jenrick, Richard Tice and Suella Braverman, 2 November 2026
- Images: Nigel Farage, Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Zia Yusuf, Z979, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
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