It’s time to be honest with ourselves. After 15 years of Tory and Labour governments, deindustrialised, debt-laden Britain is in bigger economic trouble than anyone dares to admit. And Rachel Reeves’ Budget is set to make things worse.
Reform UK will do things very differently. We will be the party of business – especially small business. We will encourage economic growth by scrapping EU rules and reducing over-regulation, lowering energy costs and freeing businesses to get on and make money.
Reform will be the most pro-business government this country has seen in modern times. We will bring into government people with real economic expertise. And we will signal a change of attitude towards working hard and success.
But Reform will also be the real party of working people, standing up for alarm-clock Britain – the millions of hard-working people who roll up their sleeves each morning – and tackling the cost-of-living crisis.
By scrapping Net Zero targets we can cut household energy bills. By reducing mass immigration, we will make it easier to find affordable homes.
By reducing the bloated welfare state, we can raise the level at which workers start paying income tax. Crucially, Reform UK will make work pay.
None of this will be easy. Britain is broken, and Britain is broke. We cannot trust the same failed politicians and parties who broke Britain to pose as the solution to the problems they created.
At the heart of this problem, we have a political class who know nothing about business and many of whom have never had a proper job. We are led by human rights lawyers, not entrepreneurs.
Nigel Farage says that Reform UK ‘will be the real party of working people, standing up for alarm-clock Britain’
There is a gaping chasm between the political and media bubble in Westminster and the real world where people live and work. We have ministers running departments and making decisions over areas about which they have little or no knowledge or experience.
Ministers’ only qualification is to be an MP in the prime minister’s good books – they get moved again at the PM’s whim. Britain has had 18 rail ministers in 14 years. And we wonder why the railways don’t work.
Enough. A pro-business Reform government will bring in private-sector expertise. We will have ministers who understand the areas over which they have direct responsibility.
Reform believes we need innovation, energy and, yes, risk-taking. And to do that, we need the right people.
Many of them are leaving the UK, not just wealthy non-doms, but also thousands of ambitious young people in search of career opportunities elsewhere.
The socialist dogma that it’s good to tax the rich has infected the Labour Party and indeed the Conservative Party. But their non-dom tax changes are a self-induced act of stupidity.
The highest tax payers provide work and investment. If the rich leave, then those on lower incomes will have more tax to pay, a simple fact that needs to be explained. We want as many successful people as possible to live and work in the UK, paying their taxes as legally required. That’s why we have proposed a Britannia Card, to bring people back to this country.
Though we will also have to fix the law and order problem in London, something Mayor Sadiq Khan seems to care little about.
Reform will end the brain drain, we will end the wealth drain and we will make the UK an attractive place to invest, work and live.
Britain needs to re-industrialise in everything from cement making, chemicals and steel, to data centres and crypto mining. For all of them, the absolute key is energy.
We’ve managed to engineer for ourselves the most expensive industrial energy in the world – four times that of our American competitors, double that of our French neighbours.
This is a self-inflicted act of economic lunacy, brought about by the zealous pursuit of Net Zero by Tory and Labour governments.
Reform will end Net Zero subsidies. We will develop gas and oil deposits. We will remove insane North Sea taxes with the aim of making the United Kingdom self-sufficient in energy, as quickly as possible.
In the long term, we believe strongly in nuclear energy. But we cannot allow our current incapable politicians to run it.
Just look at the disaster they made of nuclear plants at Sizewell and Hinkley Point. South Koreans produce nuclear energy at 25 per cent of the cost here. We will use their expertise. We will use private money. We will make sure that long term, Britain has a solid baseload of nuclear power.
Our benefit system has become an absurd burden on the working population. The annual bill of over £300billion is more than the cost of the NHS and defence combined, writes Nigel Farage
What I’ve seen in 25 years in politics is that governments only listen to big business. They’re the ones that buy the champagne dinners, provide the best seats at Wimbledon or Wembley. Very often, these big businesses aren’t even British, but multinational corporations.
There is another business sector for whom nobody ever speaks these days. It’s called small business. These are the real engines of growth in the UK economy, providing 60 per cent of private sector jobs. Despite all the taxes and regulations government has weighed them down with, there are 5.6 million small-business men and women bravely out there having a go.
They feel unwanted. But we cannot do without them. Reform will be the party of small business. We will be the party of the risk-takers.
Our benefit system has become an absurd burden on the working population. The annual bill of over £300 billion is more than the cost of the NHS and defence combined.
On benefits, a myth has spread that Reform will give handouts to absolutely everybody. Much of this came after my announcement about lifting the two-child cap on benefits.
I actually said that we will give tax credits to British couples who both work to encourage them to keep working and have more children. I can’t think of a more pro-family policy at low cost.
We have lifted the lid on the benefits scandal that is about to break over Indefinite Leave to Remain. Thanks to the ‘Boriswave’ of legal immigration, a million or more foreign nationals will soon be able to claim benefits for life and bring their dependants.
Some estimate this cohort could cost us £200 billion.
Only Reform will abolish Indefinite Leave to Remain and save billions. We cannot afford for the Boriswave to bankrupt this country.
We have already announced our plans to reassess all those on disability benefits, reduce payments by up to £9 billion a year and stop young people suffering a bit of anxiety being thrown on the scrapheap.
And we will insist that welfare is for British people only. That will also help us to reduce the size of our bloated public sector.
Of course we want to cut taxes. But given the parlous state of the economy, we know that can only happen once the deficit is under control. We will be mature, we will be sensible and we will not over-promise – unlike the failed old parties.
Apparently Rachel Reeves will blame Brexit for her problems in a few weeks’ time.
Yet Labour and the Tories have wasted the opportunities Brexit offered to become more competitive. The harsh truth is that, from financial services to fishing, regulations and regulators are worse now than they were back in 2016.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding in our politics. We’re told you either favour business, or you favour workers. But this is total nonsense.
My party is the party of alarm-clock Britain. I am upbeat and optimistic about the future of our great country. Let’s all get to work and fix broken Britain.
