Category Archives: Nigel Farage

Former Reform MP Rupert Lowe says Nigel Farage ‘must never be prime minister’

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MP accuses ex-colleagues of sinister attempt to silence him as CPS says it will not bring charges over allegations of verbal threats

The former Reform MP Rupert Lowe has accused his ex-colleagues of a “sinister” attempt to use the police to silence him, as he launched a furious attack on Nigel Farage who he said “must never be prime minister”.

Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth who now sits as an independent, made the remarks after the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed it would not bring criminal charges over allegations that Lowe made verbal threats in parliament last December.

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Has UK-India trade deal ‘sold out British workers’ as Farage and Badenoch claim?

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Row over exemption of national insurance contributions for Indian short-term workers overshadows deal

A multibillion-pound free trade agreement with India has long been touted as a big Brexit boon.

Cheaper clothes and shoes for British shoppers, a huge market for scotch whisky producers and luxury carmakers, and billions of pounds worth of extra trade are among the benefits of the agreement, which was finalised this week.

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Tuesday briefing: The levers Labour might pull to counter a growing threat from Reform

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In today’s newsletter: Can a partial U-turn on the winter fuel allowance help the party set a new agenda – and keep support for Nigel Farage at bay?

Good morning. After Reform UK’s resounding success in last week’s local elections, Keir Starmer has faced relentless questions over how Labour will change tack to deal with the problem. Now, we may have the beginning of an answer.

On the front page of today’s Guardian, Pippa Crerar and Jessica Elgot report that Downing Street is seriously rethinking the cuts to the winter fuel payment – the policy that above all others summarised Starmer and Rachel Reeves’s shaky start to life in government. While a full reversal is not on the cards, No 10 sources say that the £11,500 threshold over which pensioners are no longer eligible for the allowance could be increased in the autumn.

Israel-Gaza war | Israel is to expand its military operations in Gaza in the coming weeks, with the aim of “conquering” and establishing a “sustained presence” in the Palestinian territory, Israeli officials have said.

Film | Donald Trump’s threat to impose 100% tariffs on movies made outside the US could wipe out the UK film industry, ministers have been warned, as they came under immediate pressure to prioritise the issue in trade talks with the White House.

Charities | Macmillan Cancer Support is to scrap its £14m-a-year specialist advice service, which helps tens of thousands of people every year, in what has been described as a betrayal of vulnerable patients. With the charity’s income falling behind its expenditure, it said that the service was no longer sustainable.

Wildfires | After the warmest start to May on record, a wildfire has destroyed about 5,000 hectares (12,500 acres) of moorland on Dartmoor in Devon. Emergency services were called to the blaze at about 2.25pm on Sunday, and firefighters spent almost 24 hours at the scene before it was extinguished on Monday.

VE Day | The UK marked the 80th anniversary of VE Day with military pomp before large crowds who had gathered in central London. The royal family and war veterans were among the attendees at a 1,300-strong military procession while street parties were held around the UK.

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Reform UK to resist housing asylum seekers in its council areas, chair says

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Echoing comments by Nigel Farage, Zia Yusuf says judicial reviews, injunctions and planning laws will be used

Reform UK has vowed to use “every instrument of power” to resist housing people seeking asylum in areas where it now controls councils, its chair has confirmed.

Zia Yusuf, the party chair and a major donor, acknowledged Reform may not be able to stop people seeking asylum being put up in hotels where the Home Office has contracts with accommodation providers.

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Now Farage not Starmer is feeding public’s appetite for change

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The Reform UK leader has somehow dodged responsibility for the economic damage of Brexit and is winning over disaffected Labour voters

There was a time when any election campaign featuring the name Nigel Farage would have featured the word “Brexit” just as prominently.

And yet, almost a decade after Farage orchestrated Britain’s great EU schism, and with the Reform leader emerging as a bigger political threat than ever, at this week’s local elections Brexit was not a word on the lips of voters.

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Farage has declared a new dawn before, but this time things could really be different

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Slicker presentation, a shift away from two-party politics and now hundreds of new councillors mean Reform is likely here to stay

In May 2014, Nigel Farage stood in front of the television cameras and declared his party’s victory in the European elections was “about the most extraordinary result that has been seen in British politics for 100 years”.

A year later, the Conservatives won an unexpected majority at the general election, restricting Ukip to just a single seat, with Farage failing in his attempt to win South Thanet.

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Is Nigel Farage’s quest to rid Reform of ‘amateurism’ paying off?

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Runcorn win was much bigger than polls implied, suggesting overall effectiveness of ground campaign

For the last few months, Nigel Farage has been promising to professionalise his Reform UK party, saying its general election result of five seats had been hampered by the party’s “amateurism”.

Friday’s narrow victory in the Runcorn and Helsby byelection suggests his strategy is starting to bear fruit. Not only did the party win a seat in which it came a distant third less than a year ago, but it did so with a much bigger swing than implied by the national polls – demonstrating the effectiveness of the party’s ground campaign.

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Reform wins Runcorn byelection by just six votes in blow to Labour

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Result will heighten government’s fears it could lose scores of MPs to Nigel Farage’s party at next general election

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has dramatically won the Runcorn and Helsby byelection by just six votes in a blow to Keir Starmer’s premiership.

The hard-right party narrowly overturned Labour’s 14,700-vote majority in the first full-scale electoral test of Starmer’s government and set a new record for the smallest majority at a parliamentary by-election since the end of the second world war.

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Starmer claims voters being ‘conned’ by Tories and Reform UK as parties are planning a coalition – as it happened

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PM says supporters of both groups are being misled and a tie-up would be a ‘disaster’ for Britain. This live blog is closed

Downing Street has described the alleged comments by the band Kneecap in the ‘kill MP’ footage (see 12.10pm) as “completely unacceptable”.

At the morning lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson described the comments as “completely unacceptable”.

We do not think individuals expressing those views should be receiving government funding.

That’s up to the group, but clearly the PM rejects the views expressed … does not shy away from condemning them.

I don’t want to see strike action, I don’t think anybody wants to see strike action.

And certainly here we are in a healthcare environment with all the staff working really hard. The last thing they want to do is to go into dispute again.

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Reform UK challenged to give details on donations after £2m mailshot campaign

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Exclusive: Liberal Democrats say voters need to know sources of funding for Nigel Farage’s party before local elections

The Liberal Democrats have publicly challenged Nigel Farage to give details of his party’s donations after calculating that Reform UK spent more than £2m on personalised letters to postal voters before the local elections.

In a letter to Farage, Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, said people needed to know the source of the money before Thursday’s elections, given that Reform received only £281,000 in donations in the last set of publicly available figures, for the final quarter of 2024.

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Farage claims doctors ‘massively over-diagnosing’ children with Send and mental health conditions – UK politics live

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Reform UK leader claims he is ‘not being heartless, I’m being frank’ as he states rising number of diagnoses is a ‘massive problem’

John Swinney, the first minister of Scotland, is attending the funeral of the Pope on Saturday, the Scottish government has announced. In a statement Swinney said:

His Holiness Pope Francis was a voice for peace, tolerance and reconciliation who had a natural ability to connect with people of all ages, nationalities and beliefs.

On behalf of the people of Scotland, I am deeply honoured to attend the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome to express my sorrow, thanks and deep respect for the compassion, assurance and hope that he brought to so many.

Eating the Tories for breakfast. @Keir_Starmer

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Badenoch declines to criticise Jenrick over Reform coalition comments – as it happened

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Spokesperson for Tory leader says she agrees with colleague that ‘we need to bring centre-right voters together’. This blog is closed

Rosie Duffield, the independent MP who left Labour after the election in part because she felt her gender critical views made her unwelcome in the party (although her resignation letter focused on welfare issues), has claimed that Keir Starmer no longer arguing a trans woman is a woman shows he is a “manager rather than a leader”.

Speaking on LBC, Duffield said:

It’s just another sign of the prime minister’s lack of leadership skills. I’m bound to say that, he’s a manager rather than a leader. He responds and reacts rather than leads from the front, and this is what we’re seeing again from him.

Nigel Farage is peddling a dangerous fantasy by claiming the UK can be self-sufficient in gas.

After sixty years of drilling, the truth is the UK has already burned most of its gas. That’s down to geology, not politics, and no amount of hot air from Farage will change that.

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Some British MPs spending equivalent of a day a week doing second jobs

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Guardian analysis finds seven MPs have worked at least 300 hours since July in outside employment

A total of seven MPs have spent on average one working day a week on second jobs since the start of the 2024 parliament, with additional gigs as TV presenters, lawyers and consultants.

A Guardian analysis of self-declared working hours found the seven had worked at least 300 hours since July – the equivalent of eight hours a week, in outside employment averaged across the parliament – totalling more than 3,000 hours between them. A further seven MPs had worked at least five hours a week on a second job.

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Miliband in blistering attack on Farage’s UK net zero ‘nonsense and lies’

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The energy secretary has accused Reform UK’s leader of peddling dangerous falsehoods about renewable power

• Tories and Reform use the steel crisis to knock clean energy. They’re wrong: it will secure all our futures

Ed Miliband has torn into Nigel Farage and the Tories for peddling dangerous “nonsense and lies” by suggesting the UK’s net zero target is responsible for destroying Britain’s businesses, including its steel industry.

Cabinet ministers are determined to fight back against the way Reform UK and the Conservatives have unceremoniously lambasted the climate crisis agenda for what they believe are nakedly political reasons before important local elections next month.

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British Steel could be nationalised as PM and chancellor consider ‘all options’

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Whitehall sources say Starmer and Reeves aligned in seeing steel as of ‘huge strategic importance’

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are actively considering nationalising British Steel in an escalation of plans first revealed in the Guardian last year.

The prime minister said all options were on the table to secure the future of the Scunthorpe plant, which is owned by the Chinese firm Jingye and employs about 3,500 people.

Defended the welfare cuts as being based on “dignity” and criticised the Office for Budget Responsibility for not taking into account possible behavioural changes of people affected by the cuts when assessing the consequences of the policy.

Said threats from foreign powers targeting people in the UK were “growing” and the issue was constantly being raised in international talks. He added: “I think we generally underestimate that threat, and it’s very important we’re alive to it.”

Stepped up his criticism of regulators, telling MPs he was “astonished” by how many there were and saying he was “frustrated” by the barriers they put up.

Called for an inquiry into the killing of 15 aid workers in Gaza and said international law “underpins everything we do bilaterally and multilaterally” when questioned about the conflict in the Middle East.

Said he would speak to the intelligence agencies and the Kyiv government after Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukraine president, said two Chinese citizens had been captured fighting as part of the Russian army.

Said changes to the social care system could come as soon as next year amid a review led by Lady Louise Casey.

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UK politics: Starmer sticks by manifesto pledge not to raise taxes amid tariff turmoil – as it happened

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Prime minister says ‘no one is pretending tariffs are good news’ during speech on car industry

In his Times article Keir Starmer describes the Trump tariffs as “the beginning of a new era”. He has been saying this at least since last Thursday, when he spoke about the tariffs at a Q&A with journalists at Labour’s local elections campaign launch. The speech this afternoon is being described as the PM’s most considered response so far to the global economic turmoil generated by the tariffs, but we have already heard quite a lot from Starmer on this topic already, in a Sunday Telegraph article yesterday and in No 10 briefings on the calls he had with world leaders about the situation over the weekend.

Is there a coherent strategy? On the basis of what he has said so far, there are at least five elements in the mix at the moment.

John Ryan is a local hero and we are truly humbled that he has publicly endorsed Reform UK ahead of May’s elections in Doncaster.

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‘I like Rupert Lowe’s plain speaking’: suspended MP haunts Nigel Farage’s big rally

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As Reform UK launched its English local elections campaign in Birmingham there were murmurs among activists about the fate of a ‘popular figure’

There was one name on the lips of many Reform supporters before their party’s local election campaign launch in Birmingham on Friday night, but it wasn’t Nigel Farage.

Instead, conversation turned to Rupert Lowe, one of five Reform MPs elected last year, who was suspended this month when allegations of bullying emerged, the day after he had described Farage as a “messianic” leader of a protest party.

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Labour ads use NHS to attack Farage’s views before major Reform rally

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Billboards in Birmingham cite party leader’s remarks about a new funding model as local elections campaigning begins

Labour has begun an all-out assault on Nigel Farage over his views on the NHS in the run-up to key elections in May, as the Reform UK leader prepared to host what is billed as his party’s biggest ever rally in Birmingham.

In a coordinated campaign before Farage spoke at a 10,000-person event in the city on Friday evening, Labour paid for nearly a dozen billboard posters around the city with messages about his talk about replacing the NHS with an insurance-based healthcare system.

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Farage confirms he wants new NHS funding model but Labour says plan would lead to huge patient bills – UK politics live

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Nigel Farage has tried to fend off claims that Reform UK would force people to pay to see a doctor

Nigel Farage has tried to fend off claims that Reform UK would force people to pay to see a doctor.

In an interview this morning ahead of big rally the party is holding in Birmingham later, Farage claimed that he had always been committed to healthcare being “free at the point of delivery” – even though in the past he has said he would be “open to anything” in terms of reforming the NHS funding model.

The NHS is something we believe in, or we used to believe in, but now doesn’t work, and everyone knows that.

Well, they’re paying already. They pay through tax.

They’re two different things. I’m not asking people to pay to go to the doctor. We’ve never said anything other than healthcare should be provided free at the point of delivery.

Only if they can afford it. That’s the point. Only if they can afford it.

At the moment, they pay for their healthcare through taxes. Is there a better way of doing this?

The French do it much better with less funding. There is a lesson there. If you can afford it, you pay; if you can’t, you don’t. It works incredibly well.

Nigel Farage’s plan to make hard-working families pay eye-watering sums to get treatment when they’re sick is enough to send a shiver down the spine of the nation. Everyone deserves a world-class health service, not just the wealthy.

Labour is investing in the NHS, Farage would cut it and give the money to the wealthiest. Labour is bringing waiting lists down, Farage would send them soaring. Labour is giving people their NHS back, Farage would give them a bill.

If Reform brought in an insurance-based system, comparable international systems show that patients could be left paying over £120 for a GP appointment, with an A&E visit potentially setting people back by upwards of £1,300. Routine operations like hip replacements could cost an eyewatering £23,000.

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Men more ready to sacrifice family life for career than women, Farage says

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Reform leader also says Andrew Tate has so many young male followers because society ‘feminises’ them too much

Nigel Farage has said men will more readily sacrifice their family lives to be successful in their business careers than women, and that young men are being too “feminised” by modern society.

The Reform UK leader set out his view on gender balance in the workplace in a conversation with journalists in Westminster, saying women made “different life choices” when it came to work. He went on to suggest that Reform attracts men because they are more impulsive than their female counterparts.

Lifted the lid further on his row with Elon Musk, saying the billionaire adviser to Donald Trump had tried to push him too much on supporting the far-right activist Tommy Robinson. “You can’t bully me,” he said. “I’ve got my principles, I stand by them good or bad.”

Said the idea of a $100m (£77m) donation from Musk had been “massively overexaggerated”, but insisted they were now on “perfectly reasonable terms” by text message.

Dismissed the idea of a pact with the Tories, saying Reform “despises” the party. He suggested its leader, Kemi Badenoch, was lazy and referred to her leadership rival Robert Jenrick as Robert “Generic”. Of Tory MPs, he said: “I’ve never met a more stuck up, arrogant, out of touch group of people. At least half of the Conservative MPs are stuffy, boring old bastards.”

Blamed net zero policies rather than the threat of Trump tariffs for the planned closure of Scunthorpe’s steel plant, and claimed the US president had wanted to do a trade deal during his previous term, but that the Tories had “blown it” by delaying Brexit.

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