Nigel Farage will today pledge to stop the boats, slash benefits and cut taxes in the first 100 days of a Reform government as he addresses his party’s conference in Birmingham. The Mail has more.
The Reform UK leader will warn Parliament it could be forced to sit seven days a week to push through a blizzard of legislation designed to deal with the “national emergency” facing Britain.
The agenda for Reform’s first 100 days will include halting small boat crossings and scrapping green levies on energy bills to save the average household £250.
The party’s Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick yesterday vowed to use an emergency Budget to cut £80 billion from public spending, half of it from the bloated welfare bill.
Jenrick said the move would cut Britain’s debt interest payments by £28 billion a year and free up cash for tax cuts to ease the cost of living and kickstart economic growth.
Farage acknowledged this week he has been left “ratty and upset” by a string of controversies about his party’s funding, including a £5 million “personal” donation from a Thai-based crypto-billionaire he failed to declare.
Reform has also slipped in the polls in the wake of Andy Burnham’s political honeymoon and a Tory revival under Kemi Badenoch.
Farage will use his party’s annual conference in Birmingham this weekend to try to get back on the front foot.
He will repeat his claim that a General Election will be held next year. And, despite his party’s recent difficulties, he will insist Reform can win it, adding: “The two-party system that’s lasted for 100 years is coming to an end.”
Reform frontbenchers have been ordered to come up with a series of ambitious changes for the party’s first 100 days.
Farage will warn today that those who fail to deliver within weeks of the party coming to power will be sacked.
Reform has already set out radical plans to stop the boats, including ditching international human rights laws, banning illegal migrants from claiming asylum and towing boats back to France.
Farage will use talks today with France’s National Rally party president Jordan Bardella to discuss co-operation on halting illegal immigration in the Channel.
National Rally’s hard-Right leader Marine Le Pen is among the favourites to succeed Emmanuel Macron in next year’s presidential elections.
Bardella said last year his party was willing to work with Reform on stopping the small boats – including allowing UK Border Force to push dinghies back to France.
Reform yesterday dismissed Labour’s £660 million deal with France, which Ministers claim has helped cut migrant crossings this summer.
Deputy Leader Richard Tice said: “We should not be sending hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash to the French to not do the job properly.
“The way to solve this is to pick up, rescue and return. It is the humanitarian thing to do. The French are in breach of their international obligations by not stopping the boats and if we have to do the job for them then that’s what we’ll do.”
Farage will today pledge to take personal charge of the mission to stop the boats, overseeing the work of the party’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf.
And he will warn Establishment figures in Parliament, the civil service and the courts that Reform will not allow them to obstruct its plans.
Farage will vow to do “anything and everything to make the first 100 days work”, adding: “If the Lords, judiciary or civil service get in our way, they will discover just how determined we are.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Two senior Reform aides, James Orr and Dan Jukes, have stepped down over claims the party breached political donation rules after what Farage called an “entrapment” operation by investigative group Verbatim.
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I didn’t watch or even know about the msm hatchet job, but I infer the beneficiary would have been Reform UK. When I hear the word sleaze, the implication for me is for direct personal gain. Like mortgage fiddling or false declarations on a CV. The closer Farage comes to governing, the more these attacks will intensify – he emphatically warned of that. For now we must see how due process unfolds. My support for both Farage and Reform is still unwavering.,
He neefs to start setting the agenda again, and he’s recruitrd too many tories – jenrick & zahari, dorries – I mean FFS.
Of course he is. Just throwing the usual red meat out to keep the right wing people in the party. The only person who I can believe will do it is Restore. The only reason Reform are even saying this is because the ground has shifted. And they have had to adapt.
Cut benefits and cut taxes on the lowest incomes to add even more incentive for people hitherto on benefits to get to work and be productive.
The impact is double – you save on benefits and you increase national productivity.
It’s an absolute no brainer.
“Stop the boats, cut the bloats”
Works for me.
Stop Press: Two senior Reform aides, James Orr and Dan Jukes, have stepped down over claims the party breached political donation rules after what Farage called an “entrapment” operation by investigative group Verbatim.
I find it interesting that there is so much focus on stuff like this. I suppose the donation rules may be useful and should be observed, but I bet other parties bend and break them too and surely the most important arguments are about policy not about who gave what money to whom.
Whatever technically unacceptable conduct Reform people are being called out on, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is no different to what you find the other major parties. Reform is just being targetted.
And the flack is heaviest when you’re over the target.
I could weep, really I could. Yet again, the politically naive leadership of Reform screw up over money. Everything that will be said at their conference will get a few column inches but will be completely drowned out by the stories of sleaze. Oh, the acolytes in the NEC cheering the leadership on will say, it was a nasty television company and left wing climate protest group, which it may well have been, but Reform officials are still on camera discussing how to circumvent the rules and Farage actually meets not only the ‘donor’ but also the ‘father’. What were they thinking? The committed Reformers won’t worry, but the non-voter, the floating voters, will all keep turning away because of the story in the MSM, where they get their news from, rather than these august pages. Stop the grubbiness, Reform, please and just get on with the message before you lose all of the marginal support you built up in the last couple of years.
Is it grubby, or is perfectly acceptable conduct being presented as grubby?
It doesn’t matter. It is the opportunity for the MSM and the opposition to report that yet again Farage and Reform are doing wrong. The non-voters who started to show support, the voter thinking about voting Reform will just see the headlines and the video of Farage saying thank you to an American not allowed to donate to a UK political party. Whether the money existed, whether the person offering the money was fake, a US climate activist wanting to undermine Reform, none of it matters, it just allows the people wanting to drown out the Reform message to say that they are grubby. You just have to ask yourself, why was Farage even meeting with the Americans without a really solid vetting of who they were?
There could be any number of reasons why Farage met some people. Politicians meet people all the time. That’s their job. We don’t really know the facts. What media tells us aren’t facts but rather stories with agendas.
I understand your point and sympathise with the idea that it would be good if Reform people could rise to a higher standard. But, in practice that is just unrealistic. If you want to run a national party with ambitions to govern, you have to have a scale which just makes it a certainty that you’ll get the odd, not 100% kosher person. We live in a world of humans, not angels.
Reform should be held to the same ethical standards as every other party, not a higher standard. But that isn’t what is happening, because the media have allies of the other parties in a way Reform does not. And they are targeting Reform.
It happened with Trump. But rather than make excuses for himself he owned everything, didn’t try to excuse himself and instead hit back, and in doing so he disarmed them. And enraged them even more.
But which Party remains for the scrupulous floating voter to turn to? Labour and the Conservatives are still suffering from being seen to be failures this millennium. The LibDems do well locally but throw it all away once the national spotlight highlights their national errors. Greens? Not for the floating voter.
And there is still time for Labour and the Conservatives to implode (even more) before the next General Election. All Reform have to do (and it is a lot) is keep doing well in by-elections and local government elections to establish their bona fides as the Party worth voting for.