2 hours ago
Key events 7m ago Farage claims there are now 'very few' frontline Tories he would want to let join Reform UK 19m ago Tories say new Reform UK line-up looks like 'tribute act to old Conservative party' 24m ago Farage says, if he were 'hit by a bus tomorrow', Reform UK would still succeed because it now has stand-alone brand 32m ago Braverman says Reform UK would abolish 'equalities department' 36m ago Braverman says she wants fewer young people going to university, and 50% going into trade jobs 40m ago Suella Braverman appointed Reform UK's spokesperson for education, skills and equalities, Farage says 44m ago Farage confirms Zia Yusuf will be Reform UK's home affairs spokesperson 51m ago Robert Jenrick says as Reform UK's Treasury spokesperson he will develop policies for 'alarm-clock Britain' 1h ago Tice says Reform would set up sovereign wealth fund to help with reindustrialisation of UK 1h ago Richard Tice would run Reform UK's new Department of Business, Trade and Energy, and be deputy PM, Farage says 1h ago Farge holds press conference 1h ago Commons business committee may investigate Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's work as trade envoy, its chair says 2h ago 150,000 working-age disabled adults to gain at least £400 per year as government raises minimum income guarantee by 7% 2h ago Labour and Tories both braced for bigger losses after U-turn allows 30 local council elections to go ahead 3h ago UK unemployment rate hits five-year high of 5.2% as wage growth cools 3h ago Most people in a future Reform UK cabinet would not be career politicians, Zia Yusuf claims 3h ago Reform UK no longer ‘one-man band’, Farage says as he prepares to announce ‘shadow cabinet’ appointments Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature
Q: Are you worried about the threat posed by Restore Britain, the party set up by your old friend Rupert Lowe?
Farage says Lowe was not really a friend. He tried to sue Farage.
He says “there is only one proper brand of centre-right politics in this country”, and that is Reform UK.
He says people like Lowe think they can copy the success of Reform UK. But “it just it just isn’t as easy as that”.
He says Lowe favoured the “mass deportation of entire communities”. What he was proposing went “way beyond the point of reasonableness, of decency, of morality”. That is why Reform UK got rid of him.
Farage claims there are now 'very few' frontline Tories he would want to let join Reform UK
Q: You have not appointed a shadow foreign secretary. Is that because you are keeping that available as a bargaining chip to potential defectors?
Farage says there are “very few” people on the frontline of Tory politics that he would be interested in taking as defectors.
But he says he is still talking to potential Labour defectors.
Q: With the SNP likely to win in Scotland, and Plaid likely to do well in Wales, do you think that if you form a government, one of your first jobs will be to keep the UK together?
Farage says when Brexit happened, it was claimed that would lead to the break-up of Britain. That did not happen.
Q: What do you feel about Nadhim Zahawi, who recently defected to your party, complaining about someone on the street looking dodgy. Was Zahawi being too precious?
Farage says people in London who claim that crime has never been lower should get out of their chauffeur-driven cars. He says he thinks Reform UK will win the next mayoral election in London because of the state of crime in the city.
Tories say new Reform UK line-up looks like 'tribute act to old Conservative party'
Q: The Tories are describing your party as “a tribute act to the old Conservative party”. How do you respond?
Farage says, after the local elections, the Tories will cease to exist as a national party.
The questioner was referring to this comment from Kevin Hollinrake, the Tory chair, released within the past 20 minutes. Hollinrake said:
After months of infighting and leaks, Nigel Farage has unveiled a front bench dominated by ex-Conservatives - a line-up that looks more like a tribute act to the old Conservative party than a credible alternative.
Even now, some are already eyeing their next career move, while others who were clearly expecting promotion have been left out in the cold.
Today’s underwhelming announcement proves Reform remains a one-man band. Only the Conservatives, under Kemi Badenoch, have the depth, experience and serious plan to Get Britain Working Again.
Q: You have fallen out with many of the people who have worked with in the past. Won’t that happen again?
Farage says he has worked with some people for 20 or 30 years.
In a reference to Rupert Lowe, he says there are people who think they can easily do what he does. He suggests Lowe’s new party will soon fail.
Farage says, if he were 'hit by a bus tomorrow', Reform UK would still succeed because it now has stand-alone brand
Q: What do you say to Reform members who see their party being taken over by ambitious Tories? And have you ever run anything that was not a one-man band?
Farage says he has been successful in politics. He has set up organisations with specific purposes; getting us out of the EU, getting the country back on track.
This is different, he says; it is about “creating a machine for government”.
In the past his popularity and the party’s were different.
But now they are past that phase, he says.
If I was hit by a bus tomorrow, Reform has its own brand, Reform has its own identity, and now Reform has its own senior characters with their own departments to lead. So I’m enormously proud of that.
Q: How are you going to ensure that you don’t have the same psychodrama problems the Tories had?
Farage says it is very simple; if people behave badly, that won’t be allowed, he says.
Q: Why don’t you hold byelections when people defect?
Farage claims that, of the last 200 defections, only two have resulted in byelections.
And he says he does not have time for byelections. He restates his claim that the next general election will take place next year.
Farage is now taking questions.
The first comes from Chrstopher Hope from GB News, who asks why there is no defence spokesperson, and no roles for Lee Anderson or Sarah Pochin.
Farage says he can’t win; only yesterday, he was accused of running a one-man band.
Braverman says Reform UK would abolish 'equalities department'
Braveman ends by claiming diversity politics is out of control.
She would abolish the equalities department, she says.
(In fact, there isn’t a government equalities department. There was a Government Equalities Office, but now it is the women and equalities unit in the Cabinet Office.)
Braverman says she wants fewer young people going to university, and 50% going into trade jobs
Braverman is speaking now.
She says schools are in crisis.
Across our schools, a quiet crisis has taken hold. Violence and disorder have eroded the authority of teachers. Too many teachers now face to face the fear of intimidation and assault in the classroom. Discipline, once the backbone of education, has been weakened in the name of progressive ideology.
At the same time, the foundations of knowledge, literacy and numeracy have been undermined by this Labour government. Changes to offset a dumbed down curriculum are all replacing excellence with mediocrity in some classrooms.
Children are taught to view Britain with shame rather than pride, to focus on grievance rather than gratitude. They talk more about gender ideology than biological fact. This is not education as it should be.
Braverman says she helped establish the successful Michaela community school.
And she say too many young people are going to university.
The truth is that many of our young people have been sold a lie about university, wasting three years of their lives on Mickey Mouse courses, all while we have a chronic shortage of nurses, builders, and care workers.
The system is broken. So I tell you what we need. Instead of Tony Blair’s 50% of young people going to university, this is what we need; we need Nigel Farage’s 50% of young people going into the trades.
Suella Braverman appointed Reform UK's spokesperson for education, skills and equalities, Farage says
Farage says the final appointment is Suella Braverman, the former Tory home secretary. He says she will take on education, skills and equality.
She is itching to get on with this brief because … millions of parents all over this country are in a state of despair about what their children are being taught at school.
[And there are] far too many young people being sent to university and being lumbered with heavy debts without any benefit to them in the workplace.
Farage confirms Zia Yusuf will be Reform UK's home affairs spokesperson
Farage says Zia Yusuf will be “shadow home secretary”. And he will focus on both legal and illegal immigration.
Yusuf starts by claiming that “one in every 25 people wandering around in Britain today arrived in the last five years”.
He says, as the son of immigrants, he knows the contribution that immigrants can make.
He goes on:
But we have to be honest. The sheer scale of immigration over the last three decades has broken Britain. More people have turned up on our beaches, uninvited in the last seven years, than stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. And those people, instead of being detained and deported, have been given free accommodation, free meals, free access to health care, free taxis, free leisure activities at the expense of the British people to the tune of tens of billions of pounds every single year. And that’s just illegal immigration.
If we talk about legal immigration just since 2010, the equivalent of the populations of Edinburgh, Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, Stoke, Bristol and Cardiff have been added to our populations. So is it any wonder why it’s so difficult to get a GP appointment? Why everyone feels unsafe? Because violent criminals are let out of jail because of overcrowding and we don’t have enough prison places. Why tens of thousands of people to our eternal shame as a country are forced to wait more than two days in accident and emergency?
Yusuf describes mass immigration as “the most profound betrayal of the British electorate in history”.
He says, if he is home secretary, Reform UK will stop the boats, implement the Operation Restoring Justice programme, taking the UK out of international treaties, and tackle “radical Islam”. He will “ensure that if you come to this country with the goal of upending and usurping our laws, you will be deported forcibly”.
Robert Jenrick says as Reform UK's Treasury spokesperson he will develop policies for 'alarm-clock Britain'
Farage confirms Robert Jenrick is his “shadow chancellor”.
Jenrick says the economy is not working. We have had decades of mismanagment, he says. But this Labour government “is in a league of its own’.
He says Labour’s “crazy energy policies” are a problem.
And there have been tax rises worth £60bn, because Labour “have not got the courage to tackle our ballooning welfare bill”.
He says people do not have enough money to pay for things like taking their kids out at the weekend.
He thanks Farage for giving him the opportunity to take on the “wrecking ball” that is Rachel Reeves.
He claims he will produce the most comprehensive plan of any party to revive the economy. He will work on this with people with business experience.
He claims no one in the Labour cabinet has that experience.
He goes on:
Nigel and I are going to be saying more about this tomorrow [they have already scheduled a press conference] but I’ll just end by saying this.
Together we are going to build an economy that serves alarm-clock Britain; the people who got up early this morning to go to work to look after their family, the people who want a hand up, not a handout, people who just want to get on in life, who want to feel better off. And there’s no shame in that.
People like my dad, Bill, who left school at 16, became an apprentice, set up a small business. People like those I grew up around in Wolverhampton and represent now in north Nottinghamshire. Decent, hardworking, family oriented, community oriented, patriotic Brits who just want to get on.
Tice says Reform would set up sovereign wealth fund to help with reindustrialisation of UK
Richard Tice is speaking now.
He says he is qualified for this post because he has worked in business creating millions for shareholders.
He says the proposed new business department would cover housing.
He says he would reindustrialise Britain.
And he would also set up a sovereign weath fund.
I’m going to be talking this time next week in the Midlands in great detail about this, a sovereign wealth fund that backs British companies, that buys and promotes British products and that helps ensure that we build hundreds of thousands of affordable homes in our towns, our rural areas and our cities. This is how we make real progress.
Richard Tice would run Reform UK's new Department of Business, Trade and Energy, and be deputy PM, Farage says
Farage starts with Richard Tice, the deputy Reform leader.
He says he will be deputy PM if Reform form a government.
And he will also lead a Department of Business, Trade and Energy.
Farage says this will be “a new super economics and business department, in many ways modelled on what the Germans did after world war two”.
Farage says he is looking for three things in potential shadow cabinet appointees: youthful energy; experience in government; and expertise.
He says:
We then need people who are genuine experts in their area to take junior ministerial positions because frankly, the lack of real world experience in government is being felt by every business in the land.
Farage says at the time of the election he said he would establish a toehold in parliament, and then replace the Tories as the opposition to Labour.
He says Reform UK has now led in the last 200 opinion polls.
It has an average lead of 9 to 10 points, he says.
