Watch out Keir Starmer because Reform leader Nigel Farage is coming after Labour voters. In a speech delivered yesterday, Farage stole the Prime Minister’s thunder by pledging to reverse the Chancellor’s cut to pensioner winter fuel payments, which Starmer is said to be considering a U-turn on following pressure from his backbench MPs.
Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage speaking during a campaign event at Stafford Showground (Image: PA)
Farage also promised to scrap the two-child benefit cap – another key demand from disgruntled Labour MPs – and introduce a marriage tax allowance worth around £1,000 a year.
It is a bold pitch to Labour voters that will wrong-foot the party’s leadership and show that popularism can appeal to both sides of the electorate. And it comes at the right time after Reform’s recent success both in council elections and a recent YouGov poll which revealed the Tories had slipped to a disastrous fourth place.
The marriage tax allowance is also fully in tune with Farage’s wish to support hard-pressed families. It allows one parent to earn up to £25,000 without paying tax while their partner can enjoy a tax-free income of £20,000.
And it’s a smart move. The UK birth rate is collapsing and Farage wants to encourage British couples to have larger families. Both Hungary and Italy have passed similarly generous tax breaks to support bigger families, but they have also coupled this with policies to stem uncontrolled immigration. The two must go hand in hand.
British families are frankly “terrified” at the cost of raising a family, says Farage, squeezed by the cost of living and the difficulty of buying a home. And he emphasises that his child benefits are aimed at British families, not recent immigrants to our country. “The collapsing birth rate in the UK, now well below the rates needed, is an existential crisis for our country,” he said. “The Tories and Labour have sought to solve it with open borders.”
Farage also underlined his appeal to patriotic working class voters by highlighting the tremendous waste of taxpayers’ money – now said to be approaching £30billion – on Starmer’s giveaway of the Chagos Islands. This bafflingly poor deal only serves the purpose of human rights lawyers, like himself, who’ve allowed a non-binding ruling by an international panel of judges to degrade our defence capabilities by handing over a strategic asset to an island with close ties to Communist China.
The contrast between the elite globalist interests of Starmer and the more practical concerns of working people is red meat to Farage. Labour is no longer the party of the working class, but the privileged public sector, which demands ever higher wages and pensions at the expense of working people paying ever higher taxes. For a moment, the Tory party seemed to understand this in 2019 with Boris Johnson’s landslide victory but he quickly betrayed those voters by waving through millions of immigrants and embracing job-destroying net zero.
The failure of both main parties to deliver a political agenda that satisfies working class aspirations has left the stage wide open for Reform and Farage is making the most of their disarray.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks to the press at the European Commission headquarters (Image: PA)
Farage’s latest speech makes it clear he is on their side. Never welcome at North London dinner parties, he is cheered in working men’s clubs. Starmer, the face of Labour, is more welcome in Islington than he is in Sunderland. The latest polls support this, giving Reform a 32% lead over Labour and the Conservatives, with Starmer’s plummeting personal leadership ratings ranging from -39% to -30%.
Farage’s benefit pledges will not come cheap, but the Reform party plans to dramatically reduce Government expenditure with a British version of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) which under President Trump has cut billions from the US government budget. They’ll also junk the costly subsidies of net zero that are hobbling industry and slash the cost of housing illegal migrants. With so many savings to be made in the bloated public sector, a rise in benefits and tax cuts directed at helping families and older generations are just the kind of policies voters want to see.
Family, community and nation are his main concerns and his policy announcements yesterday strengthen that commitment. It is extraordinary that it should take a political outsider to remind voters of how far mainstream Westminster politicians have drifted away from their values.
Our ruling establishment has raised the art of being out of touch to a remarkable degree and it’s good to see voters finally being given the chance of voting for a party that believes in simple common sense and confronting problems head on. It’s good news for families and hardworking people across the nation.
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