They say never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake – but they also say there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. It is the latter of these overquoted adages that seems to have captured Nigel Farage’s instincts. In a week where the only story in Westminster is the string of marmalade-droppers regarding Peter Mandelson’s appointment as UK ambassador to the US and exactly who in Downing Street was informed that he had not passed his security vetting (and when), the Reform leader was out and about today to remind the nation that other political parties are available, replete with their own controversies.

Controversies like issuing a rallying call to “reverse the invasion of our country” by migrants on the exact day when 58 years ago Enoch Powell made his infamous Rivers of Blood speech. The timing was, Farage was keen to stress to assembled hacks, a complete coincidence. The date had been chosen for “no specific reasons… It just happens to be a Monday”.

A Monday two and a half weeks out from local and national elections, of course. Not that the Reform plan to review and potentially undo five years’ worth of successful asylum grants has much to do with voters deciding who to appoint to oversee their bin collections. But it does get Farage’s name back in the headlines, in case anyone had forgotten he existed.

So what did we learn from Reform’s big intervention? Not content with proposing to uproot people who have legally lived and worked in Britain for decades by scrapping Indefinite Leave to Remain, the latest plan is to take a retrospective look at the asylum system, deporting anyone who came to the UK illegally (regardless of what threats they might have been facing or whether any legal routes existed), overstayed their visa or came from a country which is now deemed safe by the UK government. This would, naturally, require Britain leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and scrapping the Human Rights Act.

Farage was eager to stress that this would include refugees from Afghanistan (a country he noted had generously agreed to take back the desperate people who fled there after the return of the Taliban), and that France would also be onboard just so long as the National Rally’s Jordan Bardella become president next year. In terms of numbers, Reform says 400,000 could be liable for deportation, with 600,000 forced removals over five years. Miraculously, it would apparently not require any additional civil servants to oversee such an endeavour, as Home Office caseworkers would simply have to check existing records to determine someone’s status.

According to Zia Yusuf, the non-MP Reform insists on calling its “shadow home secretary”, “we could clear the entire backlog and get through of all of this very quickly”. As for how much it cost, Farage bandied some vague figures for potential savings around, before asserting “We’re actually talking telephone numbers in the long term”. That’s in the region of either billions or tens of billions, depending on whether or not you count the zero at the start of the number.

Farage did not elaborate. Details on other aspects of the plan – what incentives might be offered for people to leave, how the policy would impact children – were hazier. When Farage handed over to Yusuf “to put some more flesh on the bones”, the Reform chair began by informing the room: “Almost 200,000 people have turned up on our beaches uninvited over the last eight years.

That’s more than stormed the beaches of Normandy on D Day.” He paused for effect, with the smile of a five-year-old who has just told you his favourite fact about dinosaurs. Quite what the D-Day landings have to do with the policy of revoking the immigration claims of people who have already proved their status as genuine asylum seekers was not explained, but we did get lots more rhetoric about “invasions” by people who “broke into our country”. As with so much of politics these days, it’s all about the vibes, and Reform takes its vibes from the 1940s.

Just not the bit of the 1940s where Britain took in tens of thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. The questions continued. Did the British public really want Ice-style deportations?

“The British public want to see fairness” came the retort. Okay, but what about the suggestion that anyone – British citizen or not – could be stopped by special deportation agents and forced to give their fingerprints to prove their immigration status? This would apparently only happen in “hotspots” where there is “reasonable suspicion” illegal immigrants might be lurking, we were told.

This, from the party leader who warned digital ID cards would be a “tool for suppression” and heralded the government’s U-turn as “a victory for individual liberty against a ghastly, authoritarian government”. In news completely unrelated to today’s press conference, Reform’s support appears to be stagnating. More In Common’s latest MRP