Nigel Farage derided ‘terrified’ Labour today as he launch a dramatic bid to woo left-wing voters.
The Reform leader trolled that Keir Starmer is running scared of the threat from the insurgents as he committed to scrap the two-child benefit cap altogether and fully restore winter fuel payments.
Alongside the moves on two totemic issues for left-wingers, Mr Farage also announced plans for a transferable marriage tax allowance worth around £1,000 a year.
At a press conference in London, the Clacton MP accused Sir Keir of not ‘believing in anything’ and merely copying Reform’s positions.
He also took aim at the Tories saying they were ‘finished’, mocking Robert Jenrick for having his ‘teeth’ fixed as he manoeuvres to take over from Kemi Badenoch. Mr Farage also swiped that Boris Johnson will be too busy looking after his latest child to make a political comeback.
However, Reform is facing mounting questions about how they plan to pay for the extraordinary giveaways, with national opinion polls showing a clear advantage over Labour and the Tories.
Mr Farage denied there was a contradiction between being ‘the party of workers’ and the ‘party of entrepreneurs’. He said lifting the two-child benefit cap was a way of helping ‘British families’ rather than people who ‘come in and have a lot of kids’.
He argued that Reform was going to make ‘big savings’ in local government and could save £40billion a year nationally by scrapping Net Zero, as well as axing ‘DEI’ initiatives and quangos.
The party would also stop ‘young undocumented males’ coming across the Channel and being put up in ‘five star hotels’ with ‘free dental’.
Nigel Farage launched a dramatic bid to woo Labour voters today promising a splurge on welfare and tax breaks for married couples
The Tories have strongly backed the two-child benefit cap saying it is ‘fair’
Former Reform MP Rupert Lowe laid into Mr Farage for his ‘cynical’ move on benefits
Tories pointed to a massive black hole in Reform’s spending plans
Shadow chancellor Mel Stride said the pledges amounted to well over £60billion of extra spending, while Reform supporter Tim Mongtomerie this morning admitted the sums do not yet ‘add up’.
Mr Farage’s intervention is designed to embarrass Sir Keir, as the PM and ministers wrestle over proposals for cutting benefits.
There have been hints that the government will bow to pressure to loosen the two-child benefit cap, which critics argue fuels poverty. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson suggested this morning changes are ‘on the table’.
However, no firm announcements have been made, and Sir Keir has been unable to spell out how he will widen eligibility for winter fuel allowance, as Rachel Reeves desperately tries to balance the books.
The speech, framed as Mr Farage’s ‘pitch to working people’, saw the Reform leader flanked by council leaders, mayors and new Runcorn MP Sarah Pochin.
He said the Government are ‘collapsing in terms of support’ and later added: ‘Reform really are now the party of working people.’
Mr Farage went on the attack over the deal to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, accusing Sir Keir of being ‘a man that puts international courts before British sovereignty’ and the ‘most unpatriotic PM in history’.
‘He and his government are so hopelessly out of touch with working people. They U-turn on everything as they do not believe in anything.’
Mr Farage accused Labour of lacking the will to bring net migration down to zero, and claimed Sir Keir’s deal with the EU ‘betrays the very essence of Brexit’.
‘This Prime Minister has no connection with working people. No connection with what we used to call working class communities,’ he said.
‘He doesn’t understand what it’s like to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning and go out and work physically hard for the time, he doesn’t seem to understand that the tax burden, the cost of living, energy bills have meant that people genuinely have had a lower standard of living, quite consistently, over the course of the last 10 years.’
Mr Farage added: ‘His leadership frankly is dismal, it is uninspiring, it is disconnected from real life, it is in my view, unpatriotic, and now even opinion polling today suggesting that over half the country thinks his leadership, frankly, is pointless.’
Laying out his view on the family benefit cap, Mr Farage said: ‘We built this party around three key principles, things that we think need to be fought for and defended, things that we think most people in this country hold the dearest in their hearts.
‘That is of course family, community, and country. That is why we believe lifting the two-child cap is the right thing to do. Not because we support a benefits culture, but because we believe for lower-paid workers this actually makes having children just a little bit easier for them.
‘It’s not a silver bullet, it doesn’t solve all of those problems. But it helps them.’
The married couple tax allowance would exempt one spouse from paying tax on the first £25,000 of their income.
The other would enjoy a tax-free income of £20,000, the level to which Reform has promised to raise the threshold for the basic rate.
At present, workers pay the 20 per cent rate of income tax on everything between £12,570 and £50,270. Critics say that move alone would cost at least £50billion.
Mr Farage said: ‘We need to encourage people to have families and ensure they feel financially able to have them. The collapsing birth rate in the UK, now well below the rates needed, is an existential crisis for our country. The Tories and Labour have sought to solve it with open borders.
‘A Reform government will cut net immigration to zero and do everything in its power to encourage British people who are able and want kids to have them.
‘Scrapping the two-child [benefit] cap is just the start. We will, as soon as finances allow, introduce a UK 25 per cent transferable marriage tax allowance.’
He branded the current benefits system ‘perverse’ because it means some can work part-time 16 hours a week but earn less than if they claimed benefits.
Mr Farage said Reform would pay for winter fuel payments and ending the two-child benefit cap by scrapping net zero and the ‘DEI agenda’.
He said: ‘The national debt is now £2.8trillion, and that’s not just the last government, but this one too, are hopelessly adrift when it comes to government borrowing.
‘We are going to make big savings. We will stand here before you in one year’s time and show you the excessive costs that we’ve taken out of local government and at a national level.
Mr Farage’s intervention is designed to embarrass Keir Starmer (pictured), as the PM and ministers wrestle over proposals for cutting benefits
There was marginally brighter news for Sir Keir today as a YouGov poll showed he is preferred to Mr Farage as PM
Mr Farage was flanked by newly-elected Reform mayors for his press conference today
‘If we win the next election, we will scrap net zero, something that is costing the Exchequer an extraordinary £40 billion plus every year. There will be no more asylum hotels or houses of multiple occupancy. People who come here illegally, across the channel or on the back of lorries will not be allowed to stay. We will scrap the DEI agenda, which is costing the taxpayer up to £7 billion a year throughout the public sector, and yes, we see considerable savings to be made amongst the quangos.
‘So yes, I do accept that these proposals, especially the one of lifting to £20,000 the level at which people start paying tax, I accept that it’s expensive, but I genuinely believe that we can pay for it because we’re not ideologically tied to the same ideas upon which we believe the Conservative and Labour governments have gone so wrong.’
Mr Farage also declared that he would reverse the deal to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and pay billions of pounds to lease back the Diego Garcia military base.
However, it is unclear how Reform would do that after the treaty has been ratified.
Labour Party chairwoman Ellie Reeves said: ‘Nigel Farage, a private-educated stockbroker and career politician, has only ever cared about his own self-interest and personal ambition, never about what is good for working people in this country.
‘Farage wants to abolish the NHS, praised Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget, opposed Labour’s landmark employment reforms and said Jaguar Land Rover, a huge employer, deserves to go bust.
‘His Reform manifesto included billions of pounds worth of unfunded spending pledges but did not commit to the triple lock. Farage must urgently clarify whether he will cut the state pension to pay for his reckless tax cuts.’
Ms Phillipson told BBC Breakfast on the two-child benefit cap. ‘We’re certainly looking at it as part of the task force. As I say, nothing’s off the table but this is not straightforward, the costs are high,’ she said.
‘When we came into Government we had to make some difficult decisions about how we got the economy back on a stable footing, because actually it’s working people who lose out when you have that kind of instability that we saw under Liz Truss, when mortgage rates went up, rent went up as a result of all of the instability and the chaos.
‘But I came into politics to tackle child poverty, to make sure that wherever you’re from doesn’t determine what you can go on to achieve in life, to break that link between background and success.
‘That is the moral mission of this Labour Government. That is what we are all as a Government determined to deliver.’
She added: ‘We’ll set it all out later on this year, in the autumn. I think it’s important that we get it right.
