Key events
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Braverman says she wants to scrap Equality Act to get rid of ‘divisive notion of protected characteristics’
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Farage rules out pact with Tories, saying they are ‘utterly dishonourable’ and he wouldn’t trust them
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Farage says Rupert Lowe’s claim his new party at 10% in polls ‘utter rot’
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Farage claims there are now ‘very few’ frontline Tories he would want to let join Reform UK
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Tories say new Reform UK line-up looks like ‘tribute act to old Conservative party’
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Farage says, if he were ‘hit by a bus tomorrow’, Reform UK would still succeed because it now has stand-alone brand
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Braverman says Reform UK would abolish ‘equalities department’
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Braverman says she wants fewer young people going to university, and 50% going into trade jobs
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Suella Braverman appointed Reform UK’s spokesperson for education, skills and equalities, Farage says
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Farage confirms Zia Yusuf will be Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson
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Robert Jenrick says as Reform UK’s Treasury spokesperson he will develop policies for ‘alarm-clock Britain’
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Tice says Reform would set up sovereign wealth fund to help with reindustrialisation of UK
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Richard Tice would run Reform UK’s new Department of Business, Trade and Energy, and be deputy PM, Farage says
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Farge holds press conference
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Commons business committee may investigate Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s work as trade envoy, its chair says
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150,000 working-age disabled adults to gain at least £400 per year as government raises minimum income guarantee by 7%
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Labour and Tories both braced for bigger losses after U-turn allows 30 local council elections to go ahead
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UK unemployment rate hits five-year high of 5.2% as wage growth cools
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Most people in a future Reform UK cabinet would not be career politicians, Zia Yusuf claims
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Reform UK no longer ‘one-man band’, Farage says as he prepares to announce ‘shadow cabinet’ appointments
Q: What do you think of Matt Goodwin, your candidate in Gorton and Denton, suggesting women who do not have children should be taxed more?
Farage said he would not want to see anyone taxed more in these circumstances. But he said he could see the case for linking tax breaks to having “quite a few children”.
Q: Do you think Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor should face a police investigation?
Farage said “clearly” he should.
But he also said he wanted to learn more about Peter Mandelson’s links with Russia.
Farage said that he did not accept that state involvement in some industries – a policy Reform UK favours – was “socialist”.
Jenrick backed this up, saying he did not accept that reindustrialisation was socialist either.
Braverman says she wants to scrap Equality Act to get rid of ‘divisive notion of protected characteristics’
Q: Reform UK wants to increase the birth rate. But Suella Braverman is talking about getting rid of the Equality Act. If you get rid of those protections, will it lead to fewer women having children?
Suella Braverman said she wanted to get rid of the Equality Act to get rid of the “pernicious, divisive notion of protected characteristics”.
But that did not mean she wanted to get rid of all employment protection, she said.
Q: Do you want to reduce the proportion of the economy devoted to services?
Richard Tice said he wanted to grow the whole economy. But he said high energy prices had contributed to deindustrialisation. That has been an “absolute disaster”, he said.
He said he would like to see growth back at 3 or 4% per year.
Farage rules out pact with Tories, saying they are ‘utterly dishonourable’ and he wouldn’t trust them
Q: Zia Yousuf hinted at the weekend that he would favour a pact with the Tories, if that was needed to take on a progressive alliance of Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens. Do you agree?
Farage said that was not his view. In parties, sometimes people disagree, he said
He went on:
Look, I’ve no intention of doing a deal and shaking hands with people that I believe to be utterly dishonourable. And that is how I view the Conservative Party.
He said he felt “betrayed” by what the Tories did on Brexit after 2019.
I’ve been in business a long time. I do lots of deals. Some are successful, some are failures. But you know what I do? I look people in the eye. I shake their hands because I trust them. I do not trust this Conservative party.
He said that Kemi Badenoch was “facing both ways at the same time” on Labour cancelling local elections – opposing the policy nationally, while allowing Tory councils to ask for elections to be delayed.
Farage says Rupert Lowe’s claim his new party at 10% in polls ‘utter rot’
Q: Rupert Lowe claims Restore Britain is now polling at 10%.
Farage says polling out later today will show that Lowe’s recognition is “not very high at all”. So the claim that he is at 10% is “utter rot”, he says. He goes on:
He won’t be on 1% anywhere. Not even probably in Great Yarmouth.
Farage welcomes the news that some Chagossians have returned to the Chagos Islands.
Their removal from the islands in the late 1960s was “almost a crime against humanity, frankly”, he says.
He has posted about this on social media.
Farage also welcomes the involvement of Adam Holloway, the former Tory MP who is now a member of Reform UK. As GB News reports, Holloway was with the Chagossians as they landed.
Q: Are you worried about the threat posed by Restore Britain, the party set up by your old friend Rupert Lowe?
Farage says Lowe was not really a friend. He tried to sue Farage.
He says “there is only one proper brand of centre-right politics in this country”, and that is Reform UK.
He says people like Lowe think they can copy the success of Reform UK. But “it just it just isn’t as easy as that”.
He says Lowe favoured the “mass deportation of entire communities”. What he was proposing went “way beyond the point of reasonableness, of decency, of morality”. That is why Reform UK got rid of him.
Farage claims there are now ‘very few’ frontline Tories he would want to let join Reform UK
Q: You have not appointed a shadow foreign secretary. Is that because you are keeping that available as a bargaining chip to potential defectors?
Farage says there are “very few” people on the frontline of Tory politics that he would be interested in taking as defectors.
But he says he is still talking to potential Labour defectors.
Q: With the SNP likely to win in Scotland, and Plaid likely to do well in Wales, do you think that if you form a government, one of your first jobs will be to keep the UK together?
Farage says when Brexit happened, it was claimed that would lead to the break-up of Britain. That did not happen.
Q: What do you feel about Nadhim Zahawi, who recently defected to your party, complaining about someone on the street looking dodgy. Was Zahawi being too precious?
Farage says people in London who claim that crime has never been lower should get out of their chauffeur-driven cars. He says he thinks Reform UK will win the next mayoral election in London because of the state of crime in the city.
Tories say new Reform UK line-up looks like ‘tribute act to old Conservative party’
Q: The Tories are describing your party as “a tribute act to the old Conservative party”. How do you respond?
Farage says, after the local elections, the Tories will cease to exist as a national party.
The questioner was referring to this comment from Kevin Hollinrake, the Tory chair, released within the past 20 minutes. Hollinrake said:
After months of infighting and leaks, Nigel Farage has unveiled a front bench dominated by ex-Conservatives – a line-up that looks more like a tribute act to the old Conservative party than a credible alternative.
Even now, some are already eyeing their next career move, while others who were clearly expecting promotion have been left out in the cold.
Today’s underwhelming announcement proves Reform remains a one-man band. Only the Conservatives, under Kemi Badenoch, have the depth, experience and serious plan to Get Britain Working Again.
Q: You have fallen out with many of the people who have worked with in the past. Won’t that happen again?
Farage says he has worked with some people for 20 or 30 years.
In a reference to Rupert Lowe, he says there are people who think they can easily do what he does. He suggests Lowe’s new party will soon fail.
Farage says, if he were ‘hit by a bus tomorrow’, Reform UK would still succeed because it now has stand-alone brand
Q: What do you say to Reform members who see their party being taken over by ambitious Tories? And have you ever run anything that was not a one-man band?
Farage says he has been successful in politics. He has set up organisations with specific purposes; getting us out of the EU, getting the country back on track.
This is different, he says; it is about “creating a machine for government”.
In the past his popularity and the party’s were different.
But now they are past that phase, he says.
If I was hit by a bus tomorrow, Reform has its own brand, Reform has its own identity, and now Reform has its own senior characters with their own departments to lead. So I’m enormously proud of that.
Q: How are you going to ensure that you don’t have the same psychodrama problems the Tories had?
Farage says it is very simple; if people behave badly, that won’t be allowed, he says.
Q: Why don’t you hold byelections when people defect?
Farage claims that, of the last 200 defections, only two have resulted in byelections.
And he says he does not have time for byelections. He restates his claim that the next general election will take place next year.
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