Halfway into his press conference on Tuesday – during which he announced his party would deport asylum seekers en masse if it entered government – Nigel Farage sounded a note of triumphalism.

“One of the most interesting things about this press conference … is the questions being asked are about the practicalities of individual pieces of implementation,” he said. “What I notice is there is very little pushback from the media against the idea that we really are in very, very big trouble in this country.”

At the heart of the Reform leader’s speech was a political gamble. In the past, Farage has been sparing in his use of hardline rhetoric around migration, cautious not to get too close to the arguments of the far right.

On Tuesday, however, he cut loose, describing irregular migration as an “invasion” and a “scourge”, referring to men who cross the Channel repeatedly as being of “fighting age”, and saying: “We are not far away from major civil disorder.”

With his party 10 points ahead in the polls, Farage has been facing a dilemma over whether to lean into his image as a firebrand rightwing populist or to try to appear more statesmanlike in an attempt to position himself for Downing Street.

Gawain Towler, his former head of communications, said: “Farage should not be seen as a street-fighting man. He plans to govern for the whole country and needs to be seen in that light.”

Some in Reform described Tuesday’s speech in a similar light, saying it constituted the kind of thought-through policy proposal that voters would seek in a party of government.

Others, however, argue Farage’s own answers to detailed policy questions showed he was more interested in the politics of the plan than whether it could work.

Asked by the Guardian for example why he had costed his plan at £10bn, when the Centre for Migration Control had estimated a near-identical plan would cost £47.5bn, Farage said dismissively: “Zia [Yusuf, his Reform colleague] is really good at maths.”

The gamble for the Reform leader, say experts, lies less in whether the public care about such policy details and more about whether they agree with Farage’s argument that the validity of a person’s asylum claim matters less than how they entered the country.

Joe Twyman, the co-founder of the polling company Deltapoll, said: “About one in six people endorse very strong views on legal or settled migrants, and that number hasn’t really changed.

“What Farage is doing is tapping into a longstanding but still relatively small minority. The reason he’s doing this is for the vibes – he wants people to hear a hardline message on migration and thinks most people won’t care about the detail.”

Sunder Katwala, the director of the thinktank British Future, said: “Between a fifth and a quarter have no sympathy for people crossing the Channel – thats Farage’s core vote.

“Another fifth are ‘team compassion’, but most are in between: they want control but also care whether an asylum seeker’s claim is justified.”

Farage was quickly proved correct, however, in one respect. While journalists were willing to ask tough questions about the fundamental tenets of Reform’s plan, Downing Street seemed less willing to.

Asked by reporters whether Keir Starmer had moral misgivings about Farage’s speech or the language he used, a spokesperson replied: “We totally recognise the concerns that the British people have with the surge in illegal migration … but we are focused on taking forward the practical actions and solutions that will deal with it.”

The Conservatives were even more reluctant to criticise the Reform leader. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, accused Farage of “reheating and recycling plans that the Conservatives have already announced”.

Labour and the Tories have found it difficult to respond to public concern about the levels of legal and illegal migration.

But some say the tendency of the government in particular to accept the premise of Reform’s arguments and argue about implementation carries its own risks.

“Farage is OK – in a three-way split he might be able to get a minority government on 26%-27%,” said Katwala. “Starmer, however, can only hold his coalition of voters together if he talks about control and compassion.

“If Labour is completely on the fence, it risks not keeping either side happy.”