Because “tougher controls” and “British values” are slogans, not a women’s safety strategy.
Women are not unsafe in cities because Britain has been insufficiently nostalgic. We are unsafe because male violence is still treated as background noise. Most violence against women is committed by men known to them: partners, ex-partners, relatives, colleagues, acquaintances. A serious women’s safety policy would start there, with domestic abuse, rape charging rates, stalking, prostitution, porn culture, violent men, safeguarding, single-sex services, and proper policing.
I have no issue with sensible border controls. Every country has a right to decide who enters, and women should not be expected to ignore safeguarding concerns because the left finds the subject uncomfortable. But Reform’s framing makes me very wary because it turns women’s safety into a culture-war prop: dangerous men are “over there”, while British men are implicitly civilised and safe. That is nonsense. Plenty of women have been raped, beaten, stalked and murdered by men with British passports.
And frankly, I do not trust Nigel Farage or Reform to be the great defenders of women. Farage has previously suggested that women with children are worth less to employers, and told women not to be “ostentatious” about breastfeeding. That is not feminism. That is old-fashioned, patronising sexism in a shiny populist wrapper.
Nor am I reassured by a party that wants to weaken or leave key human rights frameworks. Women rely on human rights protections too, against the state, against institutions that fail us, and against policies that treat vulnerable people as disposable. The Human Rights Act and ECHR are not just “for foreigners”. They protect British women, rape victims, domestic abuse victims, children, disabled women, lesbians, whistleblowers, prisoners, patients and families. You do not make women safer by ripping up rights and hoping the state will behave nicely afterwards.
“Restore British values” also needs unpacking. Which values? Women’s equality? Free speech? Secular law? Single-sex protections? Or a vague socially conservative fantasy in which women are expected to be grateful for male protection while our actual rights and services are ignored?
A good outcome for women would be fewer violent men walking free, properly funded refuges, police taking stalking seriously, rape cases prosecuted, sex-based spaces protected, schools being honest about safeguarding, and immigration/asylum systems that do not import or excuse misogynistic practices.
If Reform has serious, evidence-based policies on all that, fine, let’s scrutinise them. But “less immigration + British values = women safe” is far too simplistic, especially when the people saying it have a record of casual misogyny and hostility to human rights. Women should not be used as a decorative excuse for a political project that may not actually prioritise us at all.