'Labour was right that Trussonomics would “crash the economy” and that “we are once again fighting the same fantasy — this time from Nigel Farage.'
Economists are warning that Nigel Farage’s unfunded spending pledges are at least ‘on a par with Liz Truss’ mini-Budget and likely much larger’, after the Reform UK leader set out a number of policies this week in a bid to appeal to working communities.
Farage, the millionaire privately educated former City banker, who likes to portray himself as an ordinary ‘man of the people’, has announced a mixture of tax cuts, public sector cuts and benefit increases that his party would implement if elected.
He has 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. Reform claims that the pledges would be funded by scrapping net zero, which it 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.
Now the Centre for Economics and Business Research has said Reform’s policy package so far is “at least on par with Liz Truss’ mini-Budget and likely much larger.”
It comes as Keir Starmer goes on the attack against Farage today, linking the Reform UK leader’s recent policy announcements to Liz Truss’ mini-budget.
The Prime Minister will later today say that Labour was right that Trussonomics would “crash the economy” and that “we are once again fighting the same fantasy — this time from Nigel Farage.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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