Nigel Farage has made his most direct pitch to Labour voters yet, as he vowed to tear up Sir Keir Starmer’s deals from the last fortnight if he wins power and declared Reform UK as the true ‘party of the workers’.
In a wide-ranging speech in central London, the Reform UK leader turned his guns on Labour as he tacked to the left, vowing to reverse the cuts to winter fuel payments for pensioners and end the two-child benefit cap.
While Mr Farage held on to his traditional rightwing causes of slashing taxes, ending net immigration and scrapping diversity officers and policies, his message was aimed at disaffected Labour voters who polls suggest are abandoning Sir Keir.
He also challenged the prime minister to a debate in a working man’s club in Labour former ‘red wall’ heartlands after the Labour leader said he was ready to face off with Mr Farage.
But opponents labelled the Reform UK leader as “a fraud”.
Labour chair Ellie Reeves said: "There's nothing new about what Nigel Farage said today: the tens of billions of pounds of fantasy promises he made this morning are exactly how Liz Truss crashed the economy, devastating the finances of families across the country.
“Those families don't need to be told what the consequences would be of this nonsense. They live through it every month through the higher mortgages, higher rents, higher prices, and higher bills inflicted upon them by the last government.”
Mr Farage’s press conference came as a new poll suggested voters would rather see Sir Keir Starmer, Sir Ed Davey or Kemi Badenoch as prime minister.
In a blow to the Reform leader, a YouGov survey revealed all three of the Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative leaders would win a two-way choice for PM.
Sir Keir was preferred to Mr Farage by 44 per cent of voters, with just 29 per cent opting for the Brexiteer.
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed beat Mr Farage by a similar margin, 44 per cent to 27, while Ms Badenoch was only marginally ahead.
However, a Techne UK poll for The Independent put Reform eight points ahead of Labour on 30 per cent to 22 per cent.
Mocking a favourite catchphrase of the prime minister, Mr Farage declared that Reform UK "really are now the party of working people".
And he claimed that Labour are "terrified" of his party, and declared the Conservative Party "finished".
Mr Farage said Labour “are absolutely terrified of Reform" and claimed they "did even worse" than the Conservatives in the local elections earlier this month.
"We completely wiped them out in County Durham, in many other parts of the East Midlands and elsewhere."
He said the government are "collapsing in terms of support", and later added: "Reform really are now the party of working people" while describing Sir Keir as heading the least popular government taking office “since the Suez crisis” in 1956.
He claimed that Chancellor Rachel Reeves is “woefully in over her head” and vowed to tear up Labour’s deals made in the last week on the Brexit reset with the EU and handing over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
He also tore into Sir Keir’s controversial speech on immigration and in a new focus on on the importance of “family”, the Reform UK leader also appeared to suggest lowering the abortion limit below the current 24 weeks.
In a blistering attack on Sir Keir, he said: “This prime minister has no connection with working people. No connection with what we used to call working-class communities.
"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."
The Reform UK leader said he did not want to wait until the next general election for a potential debate, and would want to face him before then.
He said: "I've got a great idea, why don't the prime minister and I go to a working man's club somewhere in the red wall and we'll sit there and let them ask us questions, and you can all come along and cover it live.
"That's my open invitation to the prime minister. Let's go to one of the former mining communities, let's go somewhere that Labour have held the seat pretty much consistently since 1918. Whether the prime minister will enjoy a few beers with the lads and do the Channel 4 racing that afternoon, I'm not sure, but I am very, very happy to do so."
TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said: “Nigel Farage is a political fraud who’ll jump on any bandwagon to chase headlines. He is full of empty promises, writing cheques he knows will never be cashed.”
And Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Ed Davey said: “Nigel Farage praised the disastrous Truss mini-budget, and now he wants to repeat it with huge unfunded spending pledges and only vague promises of fantasy savings. It’s Trussonomics on steroids.”
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