LONDON — On the ropes, Nigel Farage is going for a right hook.

The Reform UK leader — who has faced intense pressure over his finances over the summer  —  came out swinging Monday at a Westminster press conference focused on his core issue: borders.

Reform is pushing plans for a military drive —  dubbed “Operation Fortress” — which it claims would ensure no small boat carrying undocumented migrants reaches the English coastline.

Under its proposals, an “integrated surveillance command” to track boats using drones, space satellites and infrared feeds would be established using the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, Royal Marines and British Army. 

Small boats would be intercepted at sea with their occupants detained, medically-assessed and given food and water before being returned on military inflatable boats to the country they came from, most likely France.

“I am entirely confident that under a Reform government, within a fortnight, there would be no more boats,” Farage — who took questions at a press conference for the first time since early May — told reporters. 

“If the Royal Navy is not there to protect this country from invasion, then, frankly, I can’t see what its purpose is,” he added.

Seizing the agenda

The Reform announcement comes as the ruling Labour Party enjoys a modest bounce in opinion polls two weeks after swapping out Keir Starmer as prime minister for former Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.

Burnham has seized the agenda, announcing a flurry of spending commitments in his first fortnight in charge, and struck a more optimistic tone than his predecessor.

He also moves into No. 10 Downing Street with the salience of immigration slightly diminished. The number of people arriving in the U.K. on small boats was 43 percent lower between Jan. 1 and Aug. 1 this year compared to last year.

But Savanta’s Political Research Director Chris Hopkins explained that immigration remains a top issue for voters.

“It is important Burnham doesn’t ignore the issue given its general importance in U.K. politics,” he said. Hopkins adds that “getting the tone right is a tricky tightrope for a Labour prime minister to walk,” especially with the risk of turning off potential Labour-to-Green switchers on the left.

Easier said than done

Burnham has so far tried to show he’s on the front foot on migration. He has retained Shabana Mahmood as home secretary, one of the few holdovers from the Starmer era and a figure who has riled up some on the Labour left with more stringent immigration rules.

During a visit to Dover over the weekend, Burnham — with the famous white cliffs in the background — promised a “relentless” focus on small boat crossings.

“People want to see this issue addressed,” the prime minister said. “The public don’t like the idea that the border looks like it’s not controlled. We need to bring back that control, but also we need to offer support for people who genuinely need it,” he added.

Labour MP Sojan Joseph, whose Ashford constituency is near the Kent coast where many small boats arrive, praised Burnham’s approach so far — though argued that more action is needed.

“We must continue the positive work we’ve already done to reduce the number of small boat crossings and to close asylum hotels, with the hotel in my constituency already closed, to restore order to our borders — and deliver where the previous Tory government failed,” Joseph said.

On Monday, Burnham’s official spokesperson dismissed Reform’s proposals, insisting the Royal Navy already has “primacy for small boat crossings” and that border patrol officers have “significant capabilities and skills that make them the best suited candidate to lead small boats operations in the channel.”

In a BBC interview, former navy commander Tom Sharpe also questioned whether the Royal Navy has the capability to enforce Farage’s plans. Reform is “talking about the largest maritime operation in the Channel since World War Two, a very evocative image, but that’s not the reality,” he said.

Reform has also faced a host of questions about what it would do if France rejects the small boats that have been turned around and sent back to its coastline. Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, said France would be committing a “crime against humanity” if it ordered French forces to block a “humanitarian mission landing civilians in safety and forcing them back out to sea, directly endangering their lives.”

Battle of the narratives

Beyond questions about its viability, Farage’s success will depend on whether he can keep attention on this policy — and away from the multiple controversies surrounding his party.

Farage is facing a special election in his seaside seat of Clacton next week, which he has billed as a chance for the public to show it is unfazed by “establishment” scrutiny of a £5 million gift he received from a cryptocurrency investor before the last election. Shortly before the Reform press conference kicked off Monday, the parliamentary standards watchdog confirmed it is separately investigating the party’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice over an allegation he failed to declare an interest.

The Reform UK leader is also facing pressure on his right flank from Rupert Lowe’s rival Restore Britain outfit.

Farage faced questions Monday about the potential for an alliance with Lowe’s breakaway party, which continues to poll in the single digits but threatens to split the vote on the right. The Reform UK chief said he would “do whatever I could for us to have a sane center-right alliance to beat Labour at the next general election” — though Lowe has continued to direct social media barbs at Farage in the hours since the press conference.

Right-wing splits aside, Farage will be hoping he can keep the political conversation on his terms — and not Burnham’s.

ATHENS — As Spain and France began to gain control over devastating wildfires that last week sparked one of their largest peacetime evacuations, Greece was battling multiple blazes on Sunday — and a sense that its odyssey is far from over.

Two firefighters, a Greek and a Danish national, died after a pair of helicopters battling a major wildfire burning out of control west of Athens crashed in midair. Another Greek and a British national were recovered alive.

Television footage showed one of the helicopters exploding and plunging to the ground in flames after the collision. Foreign firefighting and helicopter crews are often deployed in Greece to help tackle wildfires.

Another three Greek firefighters died last Wednesday while tackling wildfires in Crete and on the Peloponnese, a rugged peninsula in southern Greece.

While a fire that has been burning since Friday around Porto Germeno on the Gulf of Corinth some 60 ​kilometers northwest of Athens has subsided, on Saturday the flames crossed a mountain to the south, fanned by strong winds of up to 130 kilometers per hour, and reached the settlement of Veniza closer to the capital. According to initial estimates, the fire has destroyed around 200 houses in the area.

On Sunday flames spread rapidly through western Attica, a region that encompasses Athens, threatening communities and an industrial district outside Megara, about 30 kilometers from the capital. Speaking on state TV Ert, the president of the firefighters’ federation, Nikos Lavranos, described it as a “huge front” and a “black blanket covering an area of around [25 acres].”

Dozens of settlements have been evacuated, and firefighters are focusing on preventing the flames from advancing toward Megara, pop. 30,000. Greece’s firefighting service said more than 2,500 people had been evacuated in western Attica by late Sunday afternoon.

“Unfortunately, we have uncontrolled fires in far too many areas. As soon as the fire brigade arrives at one spot, just as the fire is being brought under control, it flares up again in another spot,” Megara Mayor Panagiotis Margetis told Open TV.

Firefighters were also fighting another blaze in the Peloponnese on Sunday as well as on the island of Cephalonia in the Ionian Sea between Greece and Italy. More than 500 firefighters have been deployed across Greece.

Wind speeds are set to drop significantly on Monday, according to the National Meteorological Service, which should ease the work of the fire services.

Europe has been ravaged by wildfires this summer after months of record-breaking heat and little rain. Scientists have found that climate change vastly increased the likelihood of Western Europe’s record-breaking heat wave in late June as well as a spring drought — both events that made the land more fire-prone.

Wildfires in France and Spain forced the evacuation of over 300,000 people last month.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed his “deepest sorrow” for the “tragic accident” of the helicopters, and pledged state support for those whose homes were destroyed.

“There are moments when the force of nature and the intensity of weather conditions exceed all human planning and every operational capability,” he said in a social media post on Sunday. “These are extremely difficult days for our country.”

MANCHESTER — Labour’s Bev Craig won the Greater Manchester mayoral by-election Friday night and will now succeed British Prime Minister Andy Burnham in the region’s top job.

Craig came top with 309,525 votes, with Reform UK’s Sian Astley trailing on 157,178 votes. The Green Party placed third.

The victory was achieved with a second round under the city’s supplemental vote system, which allows voters to pick a first and second-preference candidate.

Speaking at the Co-Op Live arena to the east of the city, Craig said she stands “ready to serve” her 3 million constituents.

“Every single decision I take as your mayor of Greater Manchester will pass the test of making your life better,” Craig pledged.

The vote was triggered after three-time mayoral contest winner Burnham resigned the job in June to return to Westminster, where he swiftly claimed leadership of the governing Labour Party and became prime minister. There had been concern that Burnham’s move would allow Reform UK — which performed strongly in local elections in England earlier this year — to seize the mayoralty.

Craig will now be have to deal directly with Burnham, who has promised to devolve more powers to England’s mayors as a part of a devolution package. The post currently comes with powers over transport, policing, and housing.

Turnout for the special election was noticeably lower than when Burnham last ran back in 2024, with only 25 per cent of voters heading to the polls this time, compared to 32 per cent at the last vote. POLITICO witnessed some voters on doorsteps Thursday evening learning of the election for the first time.

Counting continued late into the night as the re-instated supplementary voting system took the contest to a second round for the first time ever.

Reform diverted

In the weeks before the election, polls put Craig firmly in the lead. Reform UK had initially been expected to pose a strong challenge, but some of its resources were diverted South as Nigel Farage called a separate by-election in his constituency of Clacton in a bid to shut down scrutiny of his finances.

The Greens set about targeting areas in which they knew they already had support. While out door-knocking in Longsight, an area in the constituency of Gorton and Denton, candidate Geraldine Coggins said they were “going for the hat-trick,” after winning a councilor and an MP in recent votes. Zack Polanski’s party threw money at an air campaign, too, pumping out Instagram videos featuring the leader, Gorton and Denton MP Hannah Spencer, and Coggins.

Greater Manchester has a huge electorate of 2.1million voters, and there were only 5 weeks to campaign. “You can’t hit all those doors,” explained Coggins.

Coggins’ Instagram account reached 4.6million views in the past 30 days and campaign ads had been shown on screen 50.7million times, according to her team.

Meanwhile, Craig spent some £53,000 on digital ads between Meta and Google, and told POLITICO before the vote: “People have been stopping me in the street. And I’ve been really high-profile and visible in my campaign even when other parties went hard on their attacks.” A yellow Labour battle bus cruised the streets as voters went to the polls Thursday. One campaigner shouted “Vote Bev today” through a microphone while fellow activists cheered and waved posters from the top deck.

Meanwhile, Reform seemed to have toned down their own efforts. One Bolton resident said they had not received a single campaign leaflet from Reform, which traditionally relies on social media and letters rather than door-knocking, despite receiving an influx during the local elections in May where the party made big strides, especially in the north of the city region.

The party’s candidate Sian Astley drew some criticism for backing out of hustings hosted by local media outlet the Manchester Mill, and spent just £14,000 on digital ads.

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct the name of Reform UK’s candidate.