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Nigel Farage said the 2024 general election “should be an immigration election”, as he launched his party's proposals in South Wales.
The Reform Party leader said he wanted to see a “freeze” on non-essential immigration, which he blamed on NHS waiting lists and the housing crisis, saying other parties “won't discuss it”.
To distinguish his plan from Labor and the Conservatives, he insisted that the document, which he unveiled at a community center bar in Gurnos, Merthyr Tydfil, Not a manifesto, but an agreement.
He said: “If I call you 'manifesto', your immediate word association is 'false'.”
Eurosceptic Mr Farage was a member of the European Parliament for more than 20 years until the UK left the bloc in 2020 and also led the Brexit Party and UKIP before introducing reforms.
“Guess who's back,” he quipped as he took to the stage.
Immigration was a key focus of the event, with Mr Farage claiming that “Britain is broken” and “culturally in decline”, and that stopping immigration would “help us at least try to catch up”.
Admitting that Sanskar was a “very, very new” political party, he said they were not aiming to form a government in this election but were working towards a possible victory in 2029.
“Our ambition is to establish a bridgehead in Parliament, and to be a genuine opposition to a Labor government,” he said, adding that other parties were ineffective, with the Tories “split down the middle”.
Mr Farage has repeatedly said he wants to build “a big, real mass movement of people” and that “we need a good, strong opposition party that can bring huge numbers of people together”.
Five key pledges in the Reform UK manifesto include a moratorium on “unnecessary” immigration and the deportation of people crossing the Channel in small boats.
The group also believes that “reducing office waste” and giving tax breaks to doctors and nurses could lead to “zero” NHS waiting lists and recommends scrapping income tax on incomes below £20,000.
The reform also seeks to scrap Net Zero targets – the aim to tackle the climate crisis by cutting global-warming gas emissions by 2050 – and instead pledge to “unlock” the UK's remaining oil and gas reserves to turn to fossil fuels.
The pledge includes abandoning the European Convention on Human Rights.
The reform would cost around £90bn a year in planned tax cuts, and around £50bn a year in spending increases, the party says.
To pay for this, the party claims there could be savings of £150bn per year in other costs, covering public services, debt interest and working age benefits, including:
- Bank of England stops paying commercial banks interest on quantitative easing reserves, saving £35 billion a year
- Cutting bureaucracy and improving efficiency – the reform says it will save £5 in every £100, worth £50bn a year
- Scrapping is net zero, worth £30bn a year
- Cut the foreign aid budget by 50%, saving £6 billion a year
- Encouraging benefit claimants back into work, saving £15bn a year
He said: “Despite very optimistic estimates of how much economic growth will increase, this manifesto does not add up.”
As for paying for personal tax cuts by reducing the interest paid on the Bank of England's reserves, the IFS said the amount raised would be “less than half” the figure projected by the reforms and “there is no such thing as a simple free lunch”.
Tax Policy Associates' Dan Needle says Reform UK's deal has total unfunded costs of at least £38bn.
The candidates for Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare are:
- Anthony Cole, Workers' Party of Britain
- Bob Davenport, Communist Party of Britain
- David Griffin, Green
- Amanda Jenner, conservative
- Gerald Jones, Labour
- Jed Smith, Liberal Democrat
- Gareth Thomas, Reform UK
- Francis Whitefoot, Plaid Cymru
- Lorenzo de Gregory, independent
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