Badenoch: Deport foreign antisemites from the UK
Tory leader says she also backs ban on 'intimidatory' pro-Palestine demos
Kemi Badenoch has called for foreign antisemites to be deported from the UK.
Asked directly whether antisemitism was sufficient grounds for deportation, she replied: “I think so, yes. Anything that’s inciting violence against Jews, that sort of thing, has got to go.
“There has been a sort of looking away or pretending it’s about Israel. It’s being used as a cover – ‘anti-Zionism’ being used as cover for antisemitism.”
In an MD Meets interview with Mathias Döpfner, the chief executive of German publisher Axel Springer — who are set to become the new owners of the Daily Telegraph — Badenoch also criticised pro-Palestine marches and antisemitic imagery and chants.
She said: “We need to be very clear that this is something we don’t stand for. A lot of those marches are covers for intimidation. They are not protests. We need to ban some of them – we need more powers to do that.”
“But we also need to expel people from this country who do not belong here, who are promoting these things,” she added.
Badenoch continued: “We need to remove some people in public institutions who carry out very naked, open antisemitism… It has to start from the top.”
The Tory position on deportation of foreign antisemites was first set out publicly by shadow home secretary Chris Philp at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester in October 2025, days after a terrorist attack on a synagogue in the city.
Speaking at a Conservative Friends of Israel reception attended by around 500 people, Philp declared: “If a foreign citizen expresses racial hatred, including antisemitism, or supports extremism or terrorism, I’ll tell you this — as Home Secretary, I’ll deport them.”
He added: “This is sick. We must do whatever it takes to end this madness.”
Philp returned to the theme in December 2025, writing jointly with shadow education secretary Laura Trott to Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson urging the government to use powers under the Immigration Act 1971 to revoke the visas of foreign students guilty of harassing or intimidating members of the Jewish community.
Failure to act, they warned, sent “a dangerous message” to Jewish students that their safety was not valued.
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