Nigel Farage’s plan to tackle the asylum crisis rests on striking deals with Afghanistan’s Taliban and Iran’s Ayatollah, ex-Home Office insiders and experts have warned.

The Reform leader on Tuesday pledged to detain and deport up to 600,000 asylum seekers in five years if the party wins the next election in a bid to stop Channel crossings, while building detention capacity for 24,000 migrants, although he would not say where in the UK.

Farage said as prime minister he would quit international deals to make deporting all small boat migrants easier, and in the first instance strike deals with their countries of origin in order to return them home.

Senior Reform official Zia Yusuf admitted this could involve paying the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban to take back migrants from Afghanista

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