Item 1 of 5 Protesters gather outside The Bell Hotel, as the British government won a court ruling resulting in asylum seekers not being evicted from the hotel in Epping, Britain, August 31, 2025. REUTERS/Jack Taylor

[1/5] Protesters gather outside The Bell Hotel, as the British government won a court ruling resulting in asylum seekers not being evicted from the hotel in Epping, Britain, August 31, 2025. REUTERS/Jack Taylor Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab

LONDON, Aug 31 (Reuters) – The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, has criticised the leader of Britain’s populist Reform UK party, Nigel Farage, describing his plans for mass deportations of asylum seekers as an “isolationist, short-term, knee-jerk” response.

Cottrell, the Church of England’s second most senior clergyman who is performing some functions of the Archbishop of Canterbury while a new head of the Church is selected, told Sky News that Brexit veteran Farage was “not offering any long-term solution to the big issues which are convulsing our world”.

He said in an pre-recorded interview aired on Sunday that people should “actively resist the kind of isolationist, short-term, knee-jerk … send them home” policies.

In response, Reform UK’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, said “the role of the Archbishop is not actually to interfere with international migration policy that is determined by the government”.

Cottrell’s criticism is the latest in a growing row in Britain over how to deal with the large numbers of asylum seekers arriving in boats, an issue which has seen weeks of summer protests outside hotels where some of them are housed.

The Labour government says it is tackling a problem left by earlier, Conservative administrations by trying to process asylum claims more quickly and brokering return deals with other nations, but is under growing pressure to act fast.

Reform UK, which has a commanding lead in opinion polls before an election expected to take place in 2029, took the initiative to lead on the issue last week when Farage unveiled his party’s plans to remove asylum seekers by repealing or disapplying treaties used to block forced deportations.

Cottrell said those plans did little to address the main issue of why asylum seekers wanted to travel to Britain, and “so if you think that’s the answer you will discover, in due course, that all you have done is made the problem worse”.

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