Farage reveals the Reform economic policy. No-one believes it is plausible.

Following a speech by Nigel Farage, Reform has changed overnight from a low tax low spend party into a low tax higher spend party. Populists gonna populist, and they can hardly fail to notice the zeitgeist shifting after Labour’s unpopular recent announcements.

Of course, spend typically comes from tax intake, so it’s as untenable as it sounds. And it’s not like the state sector is overflowing with money at present as the administration tries

He’s decided Reform will reverse a couple of Labour’s more unpopular policies – the two child benefit cap and the removal of the winter fuel payment. Which is great. Who knew they supported a strong welfare state? However doing that will cost the state an extra £5 billion or so.

He’ll also make the tax breaks if you’re married bigger, with one spouse not having to pay income tax on their first £25,000 of income.

But the biggest new announcement is his intent to raise the minimum threshold for income tax to £20,000 overnight. This means no-will have to pay tax of their first £20k of income per year, and anyone who earns less than that will not have to pay income tax at all.

Nice in theory I’m sure. But this is a hefty rise from the existing threshold of £12,570 and has a commensurately large cost.

Of course, no formal costings were supplied by Reform – inane populist soundbites never need any evidence that they’ll work from reality. The Financial Times provides us with some annual estimates for all the above, as well as the total abolishment of all inheritance tax he’s announced recently.

Policy Cost
Increasing marriage tax allowance £1.5 billion
Abolishing inheritance tax £14 billion
Increasing marriage tax allowance £1.5 billion
Abolishing inheritance tax £14 billion
Scrapping the 2-child benefit cap £3.5 billion
Reinstate winter fuel payments £1.5 billion
Increasing the personal income tax threshold £50 – 80 billion

The astonishing £50-80 billion estimate is also supported by the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

Overall, that adds up to a £86 – £115 billion cut in public money.

For reference, it was Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget that made her Briton’s shortest-reigning total failure of a Prime Minister. Famously a lettuce outlasted her tenure of 45 days. Her budget ended up costing the country a tremendous amount as well as making a mockery of any Conservative claim to be masters of the economy. Idioms such as the “moron premium” were coined to describe what happened and the untold damage it did to our country.

And her policies only cost roughly half of Farage’s income threshold cuts alone at £45 million.

Many people are making that point, including Labour chair Ellie Reeves who said:

There’s nothing new about what Nigel Farage said today: the tens of billions of pounds of fantasy promises he made this morning are exactly how Liz Truss crashed the economy, devastating the finances of families across the country.
Those families don’t need to be told what the consequences would be of this nonsense. They live through it every month through the higher mortgages, higher rents, higher prices, and higher bills inflicted upon them by the last government.

Let it never be forgotten that Nigel Farage was the one person who absolutely loved the Truss budgets that would go on to cause untold damage to the UK, as well as cost her her career. Back then:

…Farage described Truss’ budget as, “the best Conservative budget since 1986”, while it was reported in the Daily Express at the time of the deeply damaging budget, that Farage had, “praised Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng for cutting taxes and moving ahead with the policy despite warnings from world economic organisations.”

And we all know how that turned out.

Current Prime Minister Starmer is joining the fray, referring to Farage’s economics are a “fantasy” claiming that:

Farage is making the exact same bet Liz Truss did – that you can spend tens of billions on tax cuts without a proper way of paying for it.

“And just like Truss, he is using your family finances, your mortgage, your bills as a gambling chip on his mad experiment. The result will be the same.

The Conservatives also say it’s a “fantasy”. They can’t allude to Liz Truss of course because she’s one of theirs. Instead they’re summoning up their own bogeyman to make the point.

Farage has announced billions in unfunded commitments with fantasy ways to pay for them. It’s Corbynism in a different colour.

I don’t think Corbyn was particularly well known for wanting massive tax cuts but there we go.

Their leader, Kemi Badenoch, basically accused Reform of lying:

I was elected to tell the truth. So I only announce policies that are costed, clear, or save money—anything else is a lie. Our country can turn itself around, but not with empty promises.

The Liberal Democrats also aren’t fans. Their leader, Ed Davey, said that:

Nigel Farage praised the disastrous Truss mini-budget, and now he wants to repeat it with huge unfunded spending pledges and only vague promises of fantasy savings. It’s Trussonomics on steroids.”

Economists don’t buy it, as gentle and reserved some of them tend to be. Senior Economist Adam Smith noted:

As it stands, I don’t think they have really set out how they would pay for such big giveaways…at some point, if they’re going to be a party of government, they would have to make those numbers add up.

Even the Daily Mail columnists, who could hardly be described as your typical enemies of the Reform party, don’t believe in it:

All in all, there’s an air of unreality about the proposals announced by Farage on Tuesday. Many of the figures are broad brush. They can only be made to add up through a haze of cigarette smoke amid the sound of merriment.

And anyway hate the very idea of it:

My fear is that he is being held hostage by the expectations of his new supporters. They don’t want a smaller state. They just want a better life, which I doubt they’ll get with Farage’s statist policies. He and Reform would then face a terrible reckoning – and Britain a dark future.

Even some ardent Reformers can’t quite make themselves believe in it.

…leading Reform activist Tim Montgomerie, who defected from the Tories after founding the ConservativeHome site, admitted: ‘The sums don’t add up.’

Farage doesn’t seem all that bothered. He banged on for a bit about how much money could be saved by magically getting rid of asylum seeker accommodation, ending “DEI” and “net zero”, plus the classic cutting bureaucracy every administration promises. He didn’t note of course that most of what they seem to have supposedly cut so far in local government didn’t cost anything anyway because it didn’t exist.

To the extent that he did make vague claims about which spending he’d cut to make his tax and welfare changes, the bulk of the savings come from abolishing all the pro-environmental policies that fall under his category of “net zero”. This supposedly saves £45 billion a year. Except of course it doesn’t. He seems to have totally misunderstood an Institute of Government report, willfully or otherwise.

Instead, the report claimed that “most of the investment is unlikely to come from the government”, and, as their spokesperson confirmed, “chopping private investment does not save the government money”.

The Climate Change Committee had a lower estimate, especially in the long term:

The Climate Change Committee said earlier this year that meeting the UK’s climate targets would cost the government between £6bn and £23bn of additional capital investment by the year 2035, falling to between £1bn and £4bn by 2050.

But anyway, it’s a funny kind of savings when:

Keir Starmer’s government has not yet committed to making those investments.

And let’s not get into the fact that not tackling climate change is going to create almost unimaginable extra costs that won’t be able to be sound-bited away when the world gets even hotter.

He also double-counted his “DEI” savings as they were already incorporated into the figure he gave for “quangos”. And it was noted that any big savings from the rest of the quangos would have to come from abolishing the projects they work on, rather than some imaginary reduction of administrative costs.

“Are you chopping Arts Council funding, or the money distributed by them to people in creative sectors?” asked Rutter.

He was quizzed about everyone’s favourite metaphor..

Asked if he had a ‘magic money tree’, Mr Farage admitted his sums were ‘slightly optimistic’…

But anyway, the cost vs savings balance – the actual devastating impact this could wreak on the UK were it to be done – aren’t the point in his view. What self-respecting populist would ever care about economic reality? His response:

You can argue about numbers adding up. You can probably argue that at no point in the history of any form of government has anybody ever thought their numbers added up.

One thing he wouldn’t commit to keeping is the pension triple-lock, which will certainly displease a section of his potential electorate.

Reform activists depict Labour’s female ministers as cows waiting to be slaughtered

Reform activists in Hertfordshire recently appeared to have set up what looks like a terrible entry to a non-existent scarecrow competition in the name of electoral politics.

The roadside setup in Hertsmere, Hertfordshire, shows deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, chancellor Rachel Reeves and education secretary Bridget Phillipson depicted as cows waiting to be slaughtered.

Charming.

Image of Reform activist stunt labelling stuffed cows as Labour ministers in an abbatoir

“Cow” is of course a de-humanising insult commonly applied by misogynists to women. It has in fact been used as an “insulting or degrading word for a women” since the ideology of some of Reform’s worst was last updated; in the 1690s.

A Labour spokesperson says:

This is a dehumanising and misogynistic portrayal of hardworking female cabinet members who are delivering change for our country on behalf of the British people.

The Lib Dems agree, raising also the issue of the rather dark “abattoir” theming in an era where MPs already feel it necessary to take extra safety measures to protect themselves from violent attacks. Their spokesperson claims that:

This is horrifically misogynistic and, after seeing politicians murdered in recent years, inferring that some should also be sent to an abattoir cannot be dressed up as anything other than an attack on democracy.

Nigel Farage of course doesn’t care either way. He’s “very proud” of his candidates even if, to be fair, he seems to agree that “It probably isn’t very funny.”

Reform MP cannot explain how Reform would actually carry out their supposed top priority

Reform MP Sarah Pochin is asked about how exactly Reform plan to enact their flagship policy to “stop the small boats”. It becomes very clear that this party-of-slogans has no idea how to tackle even their top priority.

Here’s a snippet of the interview, as shared by @sebastiansalek on Threads.

The best she could really come up with was “it’s about [having] the will” apparently – as if none of the other mainstream parties want to stop the boats. They all do.

The interviewer, Victoria Derbyshire, has to conclude that:

Basically what you’re saying to me is you wouldn’t be able to stop people getting in the boats.

Reform almost lose another councillor because job is too ‘dull n boring’

It took less than a month after Reform’s Barry Martin successfully campaigned to be elected to Staffordshire Council for him to realise that the job wasn’t really his cup of tea.

Why? Well, because ‘Barry doesn’t do dull and boring’. This, he feels, makes him incompatible with the heavy burden of tedium a councillor must bear.

He outlined his concerns in a previously public Facebook post:

Now thinking of resigning.

Moving on to more interesting things to do, so dull n boring, the next months as far as i can see long long mtgs with contrary ppl, endless travel, training n emails, rein it in on the social media.

Moi? Barry doesn’t do dull and boring, as u know. Maybs gone up a seriously irritating, brain-numbing branch line and the pay is so poor for all u do. pushy others demand incessantly. admins strangely n leaders on the big bucks.

Taking a leaf out of the current US administration’s tendency to govern via Twittter poll, he asked his Facebook followers for:

your thoughts. As the song goes – Should I stay, or should I go?.

Apparently very few people cared enough to voice an opinion either way. But I’m sure the residents of Staffordshire will rest ever so easy now he’s announced that he’s not (yet) going to be the sixth councillor Reform lost in quick succession. He’s going to stay. Sigh.

Had a blip. NOT RESIGNING. Team Reform on it!

The New European reports that this isn’t the first time the unlucky constituents of Staffordshire have had to suffer lazy nonsense from a party with more than its fair share of far right tendencies.

…in the noughties, BNP councillor Steve Batkin only spoke twice in his first two years and one of those was to ask what the word “abstain” meant.

Reform closes down flood committee in one of Britain’s most flood-prone areas

Lincolnshire is one of the UK counties that is most at risk of flooding, with over a third of residents being at “direct risk of flooding“. In some areas of the county that figure rises to 95% of properties.

So, naturally, after pretending to cut a bunch of initiatives that never existed in the first place, the first thing the new Reform local administration in Lincolnshire does is to disband Lincolnshire County Council’s Flood and Water Management Scrutiny Committee.

…the closed committee allowed councillors to hold bodies like Anglian Water, the Environment Agency and Internal Drainage Boards to account.

A Labour councillor in the area describes closing it down as being “reckless, foolhardy and wrong”.

Firefighters do not trust Reform

Firefighters launched a campaign to warn people against voting for Reform in the recent Runcorn and Helsby by-election

Their union, the Fire Brigades Union, produced this flyer, highlighting how Nigel ‘man of the people’ Farage is in fact very much a hypocritical anti-worker part of the very establishment he pretends to rail against.

Flyer entitled ‘Firefighters do not trust Reform UK’

Says the union’s general secretary:

Farage and Reform present a direct threat to workers’ rights in our country.

Reform is a part of the establishment. We cannot allow their divisive anti-migrant politics to pit workers against each other.

Their policies and track record speak for themselves: threatening to slash and privatise public services, voting against improvements to working conditions in parliament.

Nigel Farage has 9 jobs outside of supposedly being an MP

It’s not very surprising that Nigel Farage doesn’t take the time to actually do the job he was elected to do when we learn that he has 9 other paid gigs on the go. And that’s excluding any responsibilities that being both the owner of the private company known as Reform UK and the political leader of that company-party might entail.

Left Foot Forward lists the jobs, along with his earnings since the last British General Election.

  • Reform UK MP for Clacton – £93,904
  • Commentator on Sky News Australia (News Corp) – £25,368.00 for 19 hours work over ‘several’ months
  • Gold Bullion ambassador for Direct Bullion – £280,500 for 4 hours work per month
  • TV presenter on GB News – £331,393
  • Influencer on Facebook/Meta – £2,794.81
  • Influencer on X – £11,111.95
  • Personalised videos on Cameo – £125,303.64
  • Public speaker at AZ Liberty Network and Nomad Capitalist – £65,378.92
  • Journalist at Telegraph – £36,000 (£4,000 per month since August)
  • Influencer on Youtube/Google – £17,545.90

Since last July then he’s earned about £900k from his many second jobs – more than any other MP. This is roughly 10x as much as his £93k salary as a member of parliament. That presumably explains why he puts 10x as much effort into his supposedly secondary grifts.

Reform councillors eliminate all zero LTNs from the areas they control

Fresh on the back of sacking non-existent DEI employees, Reform-led councils have “fulfilled their pledge” to remove all LTNs, also known as Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, from the areas that they now control.

Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s chair, said last week there would be a “large-scale reversal” of existing LTNs in the 10 areas across England where the party won control of the councils in local elections on 1 May.

However, once again, the only reason that none exist in their areas today is because there never was any in any of the councils concerned in the first place.

A Liberal Democrat sums it up:

Reform are utterly clueless about how to run a council. From councillors who won’t take up their seats to schemes that don’t exist, it’s clear that they don’t understand the needs of their communities.

Now they have some power, they need to learn how to Google things first.

For what it’s worth, LTNs are:

…traffic interventions that filter smaller, residential roads using either physical barriers like bollards and planters or numberplate-recognition cameras to prevent motor vehicles using them as through routes.

Which set out to improve safety, health and the environment they incorporate. The science shows that:

…LTNs cut traffic, clean the air and enable more walking and cycling. Crucially, despite the tone of the debates you might be hearing, LTNs are effective and popular, and they become more popular over time.

Reform council members accused of not having a clue how to do their jobs by their colleagues

The Reform councillors’ first meeting now they’re in charge of Nottinghamshire County Council has not proceeded smoothly.

First we saw accusations of electoral malfeasance:

Former deputy leader Bruce Laughton went through the seven Nolan principles of public life and accused Reform of breaking them all in the election campaign. He said Reform made false promises on election leaflets and tried and failed to get former Conservative councillors to join Reform.

Then Councillor Lee, former Conservative vice-chair, went after Reform Councillor John Doddy:

I don’t think you have a clue to be honest of what this job entails. For my residents, I hope I am wrong, but I’m rarely wrong when it comes to politics. When I first met John Doddy, I thought he was a joke and a clown and I’ve been proven right.

To be honest, it sounds like it was actually the Conservatives that started the squabble this time, not Reform, so can’t really blame Reform for that. More damning to the latter perhaps is the reporter’s conclusion at the end of the article that reported this.

Perhaps the reason much of the atmosphere on Thursday was so bland was because in terms of policy, much remains unclear in terms of Reform’s positions in Nottinghamshire. Councillor Barton repeatedly said it was “too early to say” when questioned on issues ranging from home working to immigration.

I’m sure Reform did not campaign on it being “too early to say” anything about immigration.