Nigel Farage says he’s aiming to be candidate for PM by 2029 ahead of Reform manifesto launch – UK general election live | General election 2024

The SNP has called for a social tariff that would guarantee cheap energy bills for people who are poor, disabled or elderly.

In a speech this morning, John Swinney, the SNP leader, said that his plan for a social tariff would be included in the SNP’s manifesto when it is published on Wednesday. He said the document would take “the traditional left-of-centre politics of our country” and apply it to the challenges facing Britain.

And Swinney said it wanted the social tariff concept extended to broadband and mobile phone bills.

Swinney is first minister of Scotland, and his government decides what happens in Scotland in policy areas that are devolved. But energy policy is largely a matter for Westminster, and the SNP manifesto will include matters reserved to London.

In a speech this morning in Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides, Swinney suggested that people on the social tariff should pay at least half what other people pay for their energy. He said:

We believe that there are certain things that every citizen should have access to as a right. Healthcare free at the point of need, a social security safety net, pensions for older people, and free education including free university tuition.

But it is time that we recognised that these rights need to go further, to reflect the realities of the modern world.

Energy is the perfect example. The whole country has been hammered by high fuel bills. And in the Western Isles, we have the worst fuel poverty levels in Scotland.

The UK government has the powers over fuel bills and we need to see real action – so our manifesto will confirm the SNP’s plans to extend the safety net to fuel.
That should be done through the introduction of a ‘social tariff’ for energy bills – that means that if you are on a low income, disabled or elderly, you get discounted fuel bills. Campaigners have backed a half-price tariff and that seems like a good start to us. And we believe the costs should be met from a combination of general taxation and by top slicing the profits of energy companies making massive amounts of money at the expense of ordinary people.

And, arguing for a social tariff for broadband and mobile phone charges, Swinney said:

Connectivity – fast broadband and good mobile phone connections – are critical to modern life. In fact, in rural Scotland and the Isles, it is critical to the whole future of the economy.
As more and more people work from home at least part of the week, often you literally cannot do your job without a decent internet connection. That’s why, to help people get jobs, keep jobs and keep more of their hard-earned cash, there should be a social tariff for broadband and mobile charges too.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, told business leaders at an event this morning that the Labour manifesto had their fingerprints all over it.

At a meeting of Labour’s infrastructure council, set up by the party last year, Reeves said:

I really hope that when you do read it, or if you read the section on the economy, that you will see your fingerprints all over it.

Because the ideas that we’ve set out in that manifesto on how to grow the economy are based on so many of the conversations I’ve had with businesses and investors over the last three years.

Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, was also on the Today programme this morning. If, as the polls suggest, the Conservatives party loses badly, one question the Tory post-defeat inquest will address will be whether Rishi Sunak was right to call the election now. Shapps implied this morning he thought Sunak made a mistake.

Asked by Mishal Husain if it was a good idea to call an election now, Shapps replied:

It’s a decision only a prime minister can make.

Asked, again, if it was a good one, Shapps sidestepped the question.

Asked about Nigel Farage, Shapps also made it clear that he isn’t one of those Tories angling to see him join the party. Asked if he could imagine Farage defecting to the Tories if he is elected as a Reform UK MP, Shapps replied:

Anyone is welcome to be a Conservative, but you can’t be Conservative if you belong to another party, and if indeed you stand against the party, so that’s how Conservative membership and indeed membership for all parties works.

If you want to renounce your own party and cross the floor, then of course we look at those cases on an individual basis. But, to be clear, there is only one outcome of people voting Reform in this election, to give Keir Starmer a supermajority.

Asked if he thought he might lose in Welwyn Hatfield, where he had a majority of 10,955 at the last election, Shapps said he ‘always accepted” he had a marginal seat

The YouGov MRP poll suggests Labour will beat Shapps by 47% to 29%. The Survation MRP has Labour winning by 40% to 31%.

Nigel Farage suggested Reform UK had been let down by a professional vetting company this morning as he dealt with questions about the latest example of someone with a history of expressing extremist views being selected as a candidate.

He was responding to the news that Grant StClair-Armstrong has resigned from the party after it was discovered he had previously encouraged people to vote for the far-right British National party. But StClair-Armstrong remains on the ballot paper as the Reform UK candidate in North West Essex, where the business secretary Kemi Badenoch is defending her seat.

Daniel Lavelle has the story, which was broken by the Times.

Asked about StClair-Armstrong, Farage told the Today programme:

This particular case is a chap in his 70s, who 20 years ago said he was thinking of voting BNP as a protest vote, he was never a member of the BNP.

However, we don’t find that acceptable. Now, we did put in place – with quite a well-known political figure, who runs a professional vetting company – we put in place something, we spent a great deal of money on getting that vetting done, it wasn’t done, and I’ll talk more about that over the next couple of days.

With a short general election every party is having problems with candidates.

In fact, StClair-Armstrong wrote a blog urging people to vote BNP in 2010, 14 years ago, not 20 years ago.

Reform UK has regularly had to remove or reprimand candidates over extremist views.

Best for Britain, a campaign group aiming to fix the problems caused by Brexit, has published a tactical voting guide for people wanting to use their vote in such as way as to ensure the election of the smallest possible number of Conservative or Reform UK MPs.

These are from Peter Walker, who was at the launch event this morning.

I’m at an event hosted by Best for Britain, who are putting out a guide to tactical voting to best oust the Tories. They recommend tactical voting:
Labour in 370 seats
LD in 69
Green in 3
SNP in 7
Plaid in 2
and ‘vote with your heart’ in 181

Do remember that these are just one group’s best recommendations, and that inevitably some of them will be bitterly disputed by other opposition parties.

Best for Britain has commissioned their own large-scale polling (22,000 people) suggesting just under 40% of all voters would consider voting tactically to get rid of the Conservatives (while 14% would do so to keep the Tories).

The idea of Nigel Farage become prime minister before the end of the decade (see 9.28am) may seem ridiculous, but it is less ridiculous than the prospect of Donald Trump becoming next US president would have sounded at the time of the 2012 presidential election.

In his Today interview Farage was asked about his support for Trump, and he only half defended him over his actions after he lost the 2020 presidential elections, when Trump refused to accept the result of the election and incited a mob that attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to the election result being confirmed.

When Justin Webb put it to Farage that Trump tried to overturn a democratic election result, Farage said: “That’s a matter of opinion.”

Asked to give his opinion, Farage replied:

What happened on January 6 should not have happened. Of that, there’s no doubt whatsoever. Did [Trump] actually urge people to storm the Capitol Building? No, he didn’t … He said ‘Go in peace’ to the protesters, but they didn’t.

Webb said it Trump did not mean ‘Go in peace’. He then asked Farage if he approved of Trump’s efforts to get Mike Pence, the vice president, to refuse to certify the election that Joe Biden won. Farage replied:

No, I don’t approve of objecting to elections, even though I object to much of what’s happening in our system with postal vote corruption and many other things.

Asked if he accepted Trump lost the 2020 election, Farage said:

I think he lost it because the law did nothing to prevent ballot harvesting etc.

In his Today interview Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, restated his ambition to take over as leader of the opposition to Labour in the next parliament. He said that by the time of the next election he wanted to be the person most likely to replace Keir Starmer as PM.

He told the programme:

This is our first big election as a party. Our plan is to establish that bridgehead in parliament and to use that voice to build a big, national campaigning movement around the country over the course of the next five years for genuine change.

Asked by Justin Webb if that meant Farage was aiming to be a credible candidate for PM in 2029, Farage replied:

Yes, absolutely.

I think the disconnect between the Labour and conservative Westminster-based parties and the country, the thoughts, hopes and aspirations of ordinary people, are so far apart from where our politics is. And the funny thing is they show no signs of changing.

I was in those seven-way debates, one on the BBC, one on ITV, and the more that Angela Rayner argued with Penny Mordaunt, the more they sounded the same. There are no real, fundamental differences between these two parties.

Farage also said that, when he decided to stand as a candidate and to take over as Reform UK leader, he was making a “minimum five-year commitment” to build this movement.

Asked if he was committed to leading “a centre-right coalition” taking on Labour at the time of the next election, Farage replied: ‘That’s absolutely right. That’s our ambition and we believe it is achievable.”

Many commentators would query whether any movement led by Farage would be described as “centre-right”. For reasons explained here, the terms radical right or far right might be more accurate.

Some Tories would like see Farage playing this role as Conservative party leader (assuming he would be allowed to join). Some of his Reform UK colleagues just want to replace the Conservative party. Farage himself has suggested the two parties could merge in what he has called a reverse takeover. In the Today interview he was not asked about the exact mechanism by which he envisaged leading a rightwing opposition in five years’ time.

Labour would try to improve elements of the UK’s trade deal with the EU, Rachel Reeves has indicated, saying also that most financial services companies have “not regarded Brexit as being a great opportunity for their businesses”, Peter Walker reports.

Good morning. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is launching his party’s manifesto (which he is not calling a manifesto, but a “contract” with voters instead) this afternoon, and the location is indicative of an interesting shift in his campaign strategy. Reform UK is a very rightwing, anti-immigration party, much of its support comes from people who voted Conservative in the past, and when Farage announced two weeks ago that he was going to take over as party leader and stand as a candidate, he justified this primarily on the grounds that the nation had been let down by the Tories.

Today he is launching his manifesto in Merthyr Tydfil in the South Wales valleys, an old mining area where the vote has traditionally been rock-solid Labour, and he says he is there because he wants to focus his attack on Keir Starmer’s party. In a statement released in advance, he said:

One of the reasons we are launching our Contract with the people of Britain in Wales is because it shows everyone exactly what happens to a country when Labour is in charge.

Schools are worse than in England, NHS waiting lists are longer than in England, Covid restrictions were even tighter than in England and now Welsh motorists are being soaked by literally hundreds of speed cameras to enforce the deeply unpopular new 20mph blanket speed limit in towns and villages.

Since devolution, the Welsh have been ignored by the London political establishment and let down by the Labour administration they elected.

Meanwhile, the Tories have been the official opposition almost solidly since 2016 and have achieved zilch, which probably explains why we are neck-and-neck with them in the polls in Wales.

So, if you want a picture of what the whole country will be like with a Starmer government and a feeble Conservative opposition, come to Wales and then hear us unveil a better future for all of Britain.

Until now Labour has not been too bothered about the increase in support for Reform UK because, overwhelming, that seems to be hurting the Tories a lot more. But with two and a half weeks of the election yet to run, it is possible that, if Reform UK changes it messaging, that could change.

Farage has been on the Today programme this morning where he half-defended Donald Trump over his role in the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 and insisted that he could be a viable candidate to be prime minister at the next general election, perhaps in 2029. I will post the highlights shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: The Best for Britain campaign group publishes its tactical voting recommendations for the election.

Morning: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is campaigning in Devon and Somerset.

10am: John Swinney, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, gives a speech in the Outer Hebrides.

11am: Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, are on a visit at at port the south east of England. Starmer is doing a Q&A with workers.

Morning: Rishi Sunak is on a visit in East Yorkshire.

1pm: Nigel Farage is launching the Reform UK manifesto (which they not calling a manifesto, but a “contract” with voters) in Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales.

If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on X (Twitter). I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use X; I’ll see something addressed to @AndrewSparrow very quickly. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos (no error is too small to correct). And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.