Explaining how they plan to tackle what they described as illegal migration, Nigel Farage and his Reform UK colleague Zia Yusuf were happy to disclose some of the finer details – how much money migrants would be offered to leave and what punishments they would receive if they returned.

But the bigger picture was less clear.

How would Reform win a Commons majority, at least another 320 seats, in four years’ time – or sooner if, as Mr Farage implied, Labour was forced to call an early election?

How would his party win an election at all if, as its leader suggested, other parties began to adopt his policies?

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Highly detailed legislation would be needed – what Mr Farage calls his Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill.

But Reform would not have a majority in the House of Lords and, given the responsibilities of the upper house to scrutinise legislation in detail, it could take a year or more from the date of an election for his bill to become law.

Reform’s four-page policy document says the legislation would have to disapply:

• The United Nations refugee convention of 1951, extended in 1967, which says people who have a well-founded fear of persecution must not be sent back to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom

• The United Nations convention against torture, whose signatories agree not expel, return or extradite anyone to a country where there are substantial grounds to believe the returned person would be in danger of being tortured

• The Council of Europe anti-trafficking convention, which requires states to provide assistance for victims

According to the policy document, derogation from these treaties is “justified under the Vienna Convention doctrine of state necessity”.

That’s odd, because there’s no mention of necessity in the Vienna Convention on the law of treaties – and because member states can already “denounce” (leave) the three treaties by giving notice.

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It would take up to a year – but so would the legislation. Only six months’ notice would be needed to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, another of Reform’s objectives.

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Mr Farage acknowledged that other European states were having to cope with an influx of migrants. Why weren’t those countries trying to give up their international obligations?

His answer was to blame UK judges for applying the law. Once his legislation had been passed, Mr Farage promised, there would be nothing the courts could do to stop people being deported to countries that would take them. His British Bill of Rights would make that clear.

Courts will certainly give effect to the will of parliament as expressed in legislation. But the meaning of that legislation is for the judiciary to decide. Did parliament really intend to send migrants back to countries where they are likely to face torture or death, the judges may be asking themselves in the years to come.

They will answer questions such as that by examining the common law that Mr Farage so much admires – the wisdom expressed in past decisions that have not been superseded by legislation. He cannot be confident that the courts will see the problem in quite the same way that he does.

Six people are believed to have been injured after dog attacks in Leicestershire, police have said.

Officers received two calls regarding dog attacks in the area of Beveridge Lane, Bardon Hill, on Thursday morning – one at 6.30am and the other at 7.44am.

Leicestershire Police said that in the first call to police, a person reported seeing a man being attacked by two dogs.

Upon arrival, no dogs were located, but a victim was identified.

Later, in the second call to the force, three people were reported to have been bitten in the same location.

Two dogs – confirmed to be Caucasian shepherds – were then discovered after firearms officers, a police dog and its handler were deployed.

The force added that both dogs were safely removed and are now being held in secure kennels.

In an update on Tuesday, officers said that two further people had come forward to report they were bitten by a dog in the same location at the time, bringing the total to six.

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Two people, a girl aged 17 and a man aged 47, were arrested on suspicion of being in charge of a dangerously out of control dog in a public place.

The man was also arrested for a further two offences under the Animal Welfare Act. Both have been released under investigation.

Leicestershire Police also said it made a referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct because of a prior report made about the dogs.

If you want a dissection of whether the £10bn cost of Reform UK’s new deportation policy is an underestimate, the analysis that follows is going to disappoint.

Likewise, if you are here to hear chapter and verse about the unacknowledged difficulties in striking international migrant returns agreements – which are at the heart of Nigel Farage’s latest plan – or a piece that dwells on how he seemed to hand over questions of substance and detail to a colleague, again, prepare to be let down.

Like a magician’s prestige, if you laser focus on the policy specifics of Tuesday’s Farage small boat plan – outlined in a vast hangar outside Oxford, striking for its scale and echo – you risk misunderstanding the real trick, and Reform’s objective for the day.

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For Farage has been around long enough in British politics that we should acknowledge upfront how he pulls the wool over his opponents’ eyes, and hence why he seems to wrongfoot them so regularly.

The intent was not to present proposals that will turn into policy reality in 2029.

Nor was it about converting voters in any great number to Reform – if you warmed to Farage before, you might like him a bit more after this, in your view, straight-talking press conference.

If you detested him, you will likely feel that more strongly and draw comparisons with Enoch Powell. I suspect he will be unbothered by either.

Instead, his announcement was about two things: seizing the agenda (ensuring more coverage of an issue redolent of the failure of the two biggest parties in British politics); and then putting both those other parties on the spot.

Success or failure for Farage, in other words, will come in how the Labour and Tory parties respectively respond in the coming days. Look what he’s done to the Tories.

The real policy meat of his speech comes in the Farage promise to rip up the post-Second World War settlement for refugees, drawn up with fresh memories of persecuted hordes fleeing the Nazis.

Along with an exit from the European Convention on Human Rights, the Reform UK leader would pause Britain’s membership of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention.

Read more: Is it time for a different approach to stop people smugglers?

The pause of British membership of these treaties and conventions may even turn out to be temporary, he said.

“We do think there is hope that the 1951 Refugee Convention of the UN can be revisited and redefined for the modern world,” he said.

But action, he argues, is needed now because the 1951 UN Refugee Convention obliges signatories to settle anyone with a “well-founded fear” of persecution.

That, critics say, has become the “founding charter” of today’s people-smuggling industry and allows traffickers the right to offer a legal guarantee that if their clients make it to shore they’re covered – and boast this works in 98% of cases for the Sudanese and Syrians, and 87% for Eritreans – the recently updated approval rates. A big moment for a major party.

Yet this is almost – but not quite – the Conservative position. On 6 June this year, Kemi Badenoch gave a speech saying she was minded to pull out of the European Convention of Human Rights, and had commissioned a review led by Lord Woolfson to examine whether and how ECHR withdrawal, and pulling out of the the Refugee Convention and the European Convention Against Trafficking, might help.

So she added: “I won’t commit my party to leaving the ECHR or other treaties without a clear plan to do so and without a full understanding of all the consequences.

“We saw that holding a referendum without a plan to get Brexit done, led to years of wrangling and endless arguments until we got it sorted in 2019. We cannot go through that again.

“I want us to fully understand and debate what the unintended consequences of that decision might be and understand what issues will still remain unresolved even if we leave.

“It is very important for our country that we get this right. We must look before we leap.”

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In other words, what Reform UK did was steal a march on a likely Tory decision at conference.

Farage has eaten Badenoch’s homework. And she has been left accusing him of being a copycat of a policy she hadn’t quite adopted.

Then there is Labour. They accept the ends of Farage’s argument, but not, it seems, the means.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is reviewing parts of the European Convention on Human Rights – Article 3 (which prohibits torture, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment) and Article 8 (which protects the right to a family life).

But that hasn’t emerged yet, and will not, at its maximalist outcome, recommend the UK withdrawal from the convention.

And will Labour strategists really want the spectre of ministers having to repeatedly argue in favour of ECHR membership in interviews, given that is likely to be the position of two of their biggest opponents? Another conundrum for Labour, which has Farage as the author.

Then there is the question of language for both Labour and the Tories. Dare they go as far as Reform UK and adopt a tone more aggressive than anything seen in recent years – one which talks of “invasions” and “fighting age males” and sending people back to “where they came from”?

Will both political parties hold that line that this language, in their view, goes too far?

Tuesday’s speech was less about voters, more about Westminster politics as we enter political season. All done at an hour-long press conference that gave Farage a platform. Can the other party leaders now look like they’re ignoring him and wrestle back the microphone? Or can they not help themselves and respond in kind?