Reform party leader promoting gold for Direct Bullion alongside his jobs as MP and presenter for GB News
Nigel Farage has been working as a paid brand ambassador for a gold bullion firm in a third job alongside his roles as an MP and a GB News presenter.
The MP for Clacton and Reform party leader promoted gold on behalf of Direct Bullion on a podcast sponsored by the company in November, hosted by a fellow brand ambassador and influencer Rob Moore.
Continue reading...He may be in league of his own on social media, but can he convince the big money he leads a viable national party?
On brand as ever, Nigel Farage got the news that Reform appears to have surpassed the Tories in membership numbers while attending a traditional Boxing Day hunt.
He was filmed for TikTok and Instagram wearing tweeds and a flat-cap, getting the news on his phone. He said: “We’ve done it. We’re through. How about that? We’re now the official opposition.” Sticking out his tongue and smiling straight into the camera, he added: “It’s going to be a long day.”
Continue reading...Prime minister holds press conference to announce plans as ONS announces net migration figures
Here is a chart from the ONS report illustrating the latest figures.
Here is the PA Media story on the figures.
Net migration to the UK hit a higher than previously thought record of 906,000 in the year to June 2023, revised official estimates show.
The measure for the difference between the number of people arriving and leaving the country then dropped by 20% in the latest period, the 12 months to June 2024, and now stands at 728,000.
Continue reading...Exclusive: absence of good transport links now an emblem of areas that feel ‘left behind’ and failed by major parties, report claims
Every constituency that elected a new Reform UK candidate at the general election has experienced long delays to road improvement schemes and resulting congestion, a report has found, in a possible clue to the growing appeal of populist parties.
A series of other places where Nigel Farage’s party is now polling well are also lacking transport infrastructure, the report added, as well as a perception among locals that decisions were being made in London that made their lives more difficult could push them to abandon major parties.
Continue reading...Reform may well be Labour’s new main opponent, and the next battleground may not be where anyone expected
Two key rules of politics are to always look ahead, and to understand your opponent. And so it is that just months after crushing the Conservatives in a general election, many Labour MPs are bracing for fresh challenges and a new foe – Reform UK.
Nigel Farage’s party is in parliamentary terms a minnow, its five MPs giving it little more than 1% of the Commons strength enjoyed by Keir Starmer. But many within Labour believe that by the time of the next election, things could be very different.
Continue reading...This live blog is closed
Keir Starmer has hosted veterans and charities at Downing Street with defence secretary John Healey in the lead-up to Remembrance Day, PA Media reports. PA says:
The informal reception was held after Starmer pledged £3.5m in support for veterans facing homelessness.
Peter Kent, 99, the oldest veteran at the event, said he was pleased by the increase in funding and described Starmer as a “good guy”.
State visits take a while to organise. So in the next year, I’ve got to tell you, I think that would be a bit of a tall order. But [Trump] was genuine in his respect and his affection for the royal family.
Continue reading...Announcement that PM is returning gifts comes after news Labour peer Lord Alli is under investigation by Lords commissioner
Richard Fuller, the Tory chair, is on the conference platform now introducing the morning session.
He starts with thanks to various people who have helped with the conference.
After a frenetic Conference for Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick the tiredness will be kicking in, but also for the teams of advisers who want, and maybe need, their principal to take another go at delivering the twenty-minute speech of their career.
It’s a four hoarse race.
The problem for the party, and for me, is that none of this gossipy chatter has taken the conference attendees much further forward – nor has any of the four taken conference by storm.
Continue reading...Senior Tories condemn leadership hopeful’s claim UK special forces are killing terrorists over fears that European laws would free detained assailants
Popular Conservatism, or PopCon, has released the results of a survey of party members suggesting more than half of them favour a merger with Reform UK. Some 30% of the respondents said they tended to support the idea, and 23% were strongly in favour. The survey covered 470 members.
Annunziata Rees-Mogg, PopCon’s head of communications and a former Brexit party MEP, said:
Every Conservative activist and canvasser knows people who had been Tories, but voted Reform UK in July. It is no surprise our panellists understand that the next leader of the party needs to take action to bring many like-minded voters back to the Tories. Almost three-quarters want a relationship with Reform in order to unite the right.
The answer I was often given by people in government at the time was that lockdowns were very popular.
They were getting 60, 70, 80% popularity ratings in the opinion polls. But you mustn’t believe those opinion polls, they’re basically nonsense.
Continue reading...The shadow chancellor said he ‘would have died’ to have had the legacy Rachel Reeves had when he took over
Robert Jenrick has used a campaign rally just outside the Conservative conference to paint the issue of migration in highly stark terms, saying his party will “die” if it does not commit to quitting the European convention on human rights. (See 8.23am.)
Speaking to supporters in a studio theatre at Birmingham Rep, Jenrick repeated his styling of the issue in Brexit terms, saying the choice was between the “leave” of leaving the ECHR or “remain” of staying in it, and that this was a chance to “get migration done”.
This is more than just, ‘leave or amend’ – frankly, our party doesn’t have a future unless we take a stand and fix this problem. It’s leave or die for our party – I’m for leave.
Foreign national offenders in our country,who we have struggled to deport because of our membership of the European Convention on Human Rights – that’s the issue I was raising.
What is the biggest challenge we face as a party?
Our biggest strategic challenge is the fact that the average age above which you are more likely to vote Conservative than Labour is now over 60.
Continue reading...Lee Anderson, Richard Tice and Nigel Farage give speeches at Reform party conference. This live blog is closed
Richard Partington is the Guardian’s economics correspondent
UK national debt has hit 100% of the country’s annual economic output, the highest level since the 1960s, underscoring the challenge facing the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, as she prepares for next month’s budget.
As leader, you’ve got a huge job, because you’re campaigning everywhere. You’re sorting out the professionalisation with the chairman and so we’re sharing and sharing alike and that’s an important part of it. You can’t be everywhere all the time. It’s really difficult. But let me tell you, no one works harder than Nigel Farage.
As a leader of a party that is now becoming mainstream, international affairs, our relationship with our most important, strategic international partner – the US – is very important and the world will be a safer place if Donald Trump wins the presidential election. Nigel’s strong relationship with Donald Trump is actually to the benefit of this country and it’s quite right that he cements and strengthens that.
No one’s got more visibility, frankly, than Nigel on social media. I’m getting millions of views on mine. The other three MPs, likewise. We’re out there. We’re making a noise. Frankly, we are the real opposition. The Tories have vacated the premises, we hardly ever see them in the House of Commons.
I’ve spoken 16 times, I’ve challenged the zealot-in-chief, Ed Miliband. I’ve challenged the home secretary. I’ve challenged the health secretary on the failings of the NHS. So look, we’re holding them to account. That’s what people expect of opposition parties.
Continue reading...Party will modernise, says leader at Birmingham conference dominated by populist discourse
Nigel Farage has predicted he can win the next general election at a packed Reform UK conference that announced a new structure for the party but also leaned heavily into hard-right tropes and occasional conspiracy theories.
“We can win the next general election just with the numbers of people that agree with our principles,” Farage told cheering supporters in Birmingham.
Continue reading...Many remain positive about their high-profile politician but others complain that he ‘got his seat and disappeared’
It happened sometime on Monday morning, locals think, though no one seems to know exactly when. But as staff in the shops on Old Road in Clacton stepped out of work for lunch, they spotted that the billboard on the corner of Crossfield Road had been ripped to ribbons.
Plenty had approved of the poster, placed there by the political campaign group Led By Donkeys, drawing attention to the huge scale of the local MP Nigel Farage’s earnings outside politics. A photo of the billboard posted on X by the group has 24,000 likes.
Continue reading...Party’s aim is to build base of local councillors and activists, deputy leader says before conference
Reform UK plans to mimic the Liberal Democrats in building up a national base of councillors and activists to try to expand its support, the party’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, has said before its annual conference.
While the mood in Birmingham will be celebratory, with Tice joining Nigel Farage as two of the five Reform MPs elected on 4 July, there could also be some internal dissent over a planned new party constitution, with one senior party figure saying it would allow Farage to act as an “absolute dictator”.
Continue reading...PM and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, defend move to restrict payment to only the poorest pensioners
Like the Telegraph (see 11.25am), the Times has also published a new article with a Tory endorsement for Kemi Badenoch, but this one is potentially more significant. Margaret Thatcher is no longer with us, but for Conservative party members she is still the one figure from the party’s recent past whose authority is more or less unquestioned and Peter Lilley has written an article claiming that Badenoch would be a worthy inheritor of her mantle. He says Thatcher was a scientist, and Badenoch is an engineering graduate. Like Thatcher, Badenoch is focused on facts, and what works, he says. He goes on:
Leadership candidates are under great pressure to make popular pledges, to abolish specific taxes or set a numerical limit on immigration. Kemi, rightly in my view, has refused to do so. Voters want lower taxes and much less immigration (as do I), but they have seen every glib promise broken. To convince them, a new leader will need to show first, that policies have been rigorously worked out in practical terms and second, that we truly believe in them rather than adopting them to win votes. As Margaret Thatcher said: “To carry conviction, you must have conviction.”
Conviction is the fruit of hard-nosed scepticism. Kemi’s approach is similar to Margaret Thatcher’s, for whom I once worked. When ministers took a policy to her which was in line with all her prejudices, expecting instant approval, she would tear into it, challenging every weakness. Only when satisfied that a policy was totally robust would she take it on board – but then she pursued it with unwavering conviction. Kemi is likewise willing to challenge, criticise and expose weaknesses, which does not endear her to everyone. But we cannot afford to go on adopting half-baked, unworkable policies.
We can rage at Labour’s actions, but the public won’t listen to our narrative – unless we have a leader who can communicate.
Kemi Badenoch is that person. She is blessed with that rare gift in politics: the X-factor that means she can not only communicate but achieve all important ‘cut-through’, so that the public actually notice.
Continue reading...Reform UK leader banked £1.2m from role as presenter on GB News and payments from social media
Nigel Farage appears to have become the highest-earning MP, having made almost £1.2m a year from GB News.
In the first register of interests of the new parliament, the Reform UK MP declared that he was earning £97,900 a month as a presenter for GB News, the channel co-owned by the hedge fund billionaire Paul Marshall.
Continue reading...Tom Tugendhat accuses Reform leader of ‘amplifying false information’ about Southport killings
Nigel Farage was “irresponsible and dangerous” to suggest the police were withholding the truth about the Southport attack, Tory leadership contender Tom Tugendhat has said.
The Conservative hopeful, a former security minister, said Farage had been “amplifying false information” by spreading a theory first suggested by influencers like Andrew Tate, and then failed wholly to condemn the riots.
Universities “indulge in ideologies of grievance instead of transmitting knowledge” and “schools, museums and galleries apologise for our country’s history” instead of “celebrating it”.
That “equality of opportunity” had given way to “critical race theory” and the UK has seen the “politicisation of race” in recent years, which he claimed Labour would do nothing to reverse.
A new “national security police force” is needed to deal with counter-terrorism and to replace Scotland Yard’s “confused mix of national and local responsibilities and its reporting to the mayor and the home secretary, with each blaming the other”.
That defining Islamophobia in law was a bad idea, as it was blasphemy laws for one religion only.
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, made “delusional” and simply false comments about the UK riots when stating that civil war was inevitable.
Continue reading...Yvette Cooper says government will work with police rather than ‘blaming them from afar’
Phillip Inman and Graeme Wearden report:
The UK should not be “seduced” into thinking the battle to calm inflation is over despite price rises easing to the Bank of England’s target, according to an interest rate setter at the central bank.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Zia Yusuf’s membership remained active until last week, when it was revoked after being pointed out by the Guardian
The chair of Reform UK, Zia Yusuf, was a member of the Conservatives until last week when party officials were approached by the Guardian.
Richard Fuller, the Conservative party chair, emailed Yusuf to tell him his membership had been revoked last Friday afternoon, after the Guardian asked the party whether it was still active.
Continue reading...Tory leadership candidate says Reform leader’s comments are deeply misleading as she urges parliament recall
The Conservative leadership candidate Priti Patel has criticised Nigel Farage’s response to the far-right riots, saying it was wrong to compare the violence to Black Lives Matter protests.
The former home secretary has also written to the prime minister and home secretary, urging them to recall parliament, drawing parallels with the 2011 riots when MPs returned for a government statement on civil disorder and to condemn the violence.
Continue reading...Some within Labour worry that PM is failing to challenge Nigel Farage’s anti-migrant insinuations head-on
Keir Starmer sounded uncharacteristically angry as he appeared in front of a podium in Downing Street on Sunday to condemn the violent mobs causing damage and spreading fear.
Just a few weeks into government, the prime minister has been confronted with an appalling triple murder of three young girls, followed by days of rioting whipped up by online disinformation that a migrant was responsible.
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