His plans would require cutting public services
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been compared to disgraced former Tory PM Liz Truss, after failing to set out how his party’s spending pledges worth billions of pounds would be funded.
The far-right party leader has sought to exploit political apathy and pledged to bring back winter fuel payments for all pensioners, scrap the two-child benefit cap and stop anyone earning less than £20,000 a year from paying tax.
Farage says that the pledges would be funded by scrapping net zero, which Reform says would save a massive £225 billion over five years.
Stuart Adam, a senior economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the tax pledge alone could cost up to £80 billion. He added that it would be “very difficult” to find savings to fund it without cutting public services.
Labour chair Ellie Reeves 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.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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