Nigel Farage has announced Reform UK would raise the basic rate income tax threshold from £12,570 to £20,000 if his party wins the next general election. At a major political rally on Friday to launch his party’s local election campaign, he outlined that he would pay for this major tax cut by rooting out civil service waste at all levels.

He cited Elon Musk’s DOGE unit in the US as his inspiration, telling the audience: “We will cut taxes. Nobody that earns less than £20,000 a year should pay any income tax whatsoever. We are on the side of the worker, on the side of working people. We want to incentivise those on benefits to get off benefits and get back to work, and not have this nonsense of if you work for more than 16 hours you lose your benefits. No, £20,000 is the right place to start paying tax – let’s make work pay and be on the side of working people.”

He also suggested Reform will abolish inheritance tax not just for farmers, but for all Britons.

He said he would pay for these major tax cuts with “pretty big cuts to the administrative state which has grown out of all proportion”.

He said civil servants would be met with the threat of having to work from the office or be sacked.

He explained: “We need a British form of DOGE as Elon Musk has got in America.”

Mr Farage also used his keynote address to set a new target for Reform UK to overtake Labour’s membership numbers by the end of this year – and become the largest party by membership in British politics.

The war on waste continued with pledges to cut unnecessary spending at local council level.

Mr Farage revealed: “Be in no doubt that local government is broken. There are over 3000 council staff in Britain earning over £100,000 a year.”

Reform UK has submitted 3,000 FOI requests over the last few months, and say they are now armed with the facts as to just how much public money is being wasted.

His speech was delivered at a huge political rally in the centre of Birmingham, to which Reform UK had sold 10,000 tickets.

All four of the party’s MPs were present, as were hundreds of their mayoral and council candidates.

In the biggest surprise announcement of the evening, former UKIP and Brexit campaign mega-donor Arron Banks was revealed as Reform’s candidate for West of England Mayor.

Mr Banks explained: “When Nigel asked me to do I was at a cricket match in South Africa drinking a glass of white wine, but when the boss phones you and says ‘you’ve got to do it’ you’ve got to do it, right?”

The stadium had been decked out in life-size shop fronts, bus stops and shuttered pubs. The floor was covered in potholes to demonstrate the current failures of councils up and down the country.

Mr Farage entered the stadium riding a JCB pothole filler, lent to him by former Tory donor Lord Bamford, as a symbol of the biggest issue councils are failing voters over.

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Mr Farage told the thousands-strong audience: “This is the most ambitious launch ever for a local election campaign but be in no doubt we are standing in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, we are standing in all six of the mayoralties, and we will, as opposed to last year where the party only managed to field candidates in 12% of the seats, be fielding a full list of candidates across the entire country.”

“We remain furious that five and a half million people, with no good reason, have been denied their vote on May 1 this year, but we will from this moment on concentrate on the cards that we have been dealt.”

He also launched a furious tirade against net zero, describing it as a “ludicrous, self-defeating act of economic unilateralism” following the announced closure of the Scunthorpe works.

Mr Farage warned: “We now become the only member of the G7 that does not produce primary steel. This is incredible, especially given the difficulties of the international situation.”

“Steel is not just an ordinary commodity. It is a vital strategic asset.”