Nigel Farage confirms he wants to be prime minister in five years as he calls for ‘genuine change’
NIGEL Farage wants to be Prime Minister by 2029, the Reform leader has confirmed.
The Brexit firebrand confirmed he would seek the keys to No.10 at the next election and called for “genuine change” from the two-party system.
Mr Farage had previously declared his return to lead the right-wing Tory rivals was part of a “five-year plan”.
Last week he also declared himself to be the “new leader of the opposition” and said he’d win “many” seats after one poll showed Reform above the Conservatives.
Speaking to the BBC this morning, he blasted that the Tories “can’t agree on anything”.
He continued: “They’re split down the middle, and we know what we stand for, we know what we believe in, and for democracy to function properly there needs to be a proper voice of opposition.
“And our plan – and 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 if he would stand to be prime minister at an election in 2029, Mr 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.”
It comes just hours before Farage launches his “contract with the people” in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, this morning.
The party has promised to remove seven million people from the tax system entirely by raising the personal income tax allowance from £12,500 to £20,000 a year.
Farage also promised last week to lift the two-child benefit cap, which would hand a boost to around 270,000 families.
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Farage is also expected to cut corporation tax to 15 per cent as part of what he has branded “The Great British Tax Cut”.
The surging populist will unveil his plans in Wales “because it shows everyone exactly what happens to a country when Labour is in charge”, as he turns his guns on Sir Keir Starmer.
Last week Farage told The Sun he was on course to hoover up millions of votes. Experts believe many will be 2019 Tory voters.
He said just winning one seat in Clacton in Essex, where he is standing in his eighth bid to become an MP, was not enough.
He added: “We are not going to get four million votes. We are not going to get five million votes.
“We are going to get a very, very substantial number of votes.
“I genuinely think we can get over six million votes. I don’t know where the ceiling is.”
Six million would be streets above the 3.9 million his former party, Ukip, won in 2015 when it secured 12.6 per cent of the vote.
The firebrand is determined to get on the next few TV debates to shore up his voter base.
He said: “Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer are taking part in a BBC debate on 26th June. As we are now ahead of the Conservatives in the polls, I demand that Reform UK is a part of this debate.
“If the BBC want a fight with me on this, they can have one.”
He also insisted on being part of the four-way leaders’ event next week that also includes the Lib Dems and the SNP.
ANALYSIS: Is a supermajority the answer?
By HARRY COLE, Political Editor
“THERE is something happening out there,” declared Nigel Farage last week as he finally gave in to either the angel or the devil on his shoulder telling him his country needed him.
If the hundreds-deep crowd he pulled on a cloudy Clacton seafront the next day is anything to go by, Nige could well be on to something.
The last time I heard someone say that exact phrase, Boris Johnson was swept back into Downing Street with an 80-seat majority a few weeks later — riding forth from the smouldering ruins of Labour’s electoral Red Wall.
The time before that, it was a week or so before the 2016 Brexit referendum when I ran into a pale-looking Labour MP who had just returned from their Northern seat, adamant that whatever the polls said, Leave were on course for victory.
Both were right, and both subsequent earthquakes had the blond bombshell as their protagonist.
But with Johnson turfed out, and choosing a sun lounger and the lucrative business circuit over riding to Rishi Sunak’s rescue, Farage is the closest thing voters have to a BoJo on the ballot paper this time round.
But both have that ballot box gold-dust: Authenticity.
And both make connections with people you would not necessarily expect public school boys to connect with.
They both have an attraction that makes lots of people want to cross the road to shake their hand or have a selfie — and a vocal minority want to chuck things at their head. And they both share a ferret-like sense for shifts in the public mood — and an ability to sniff out ripe opportunities for personal advancement.
The polls, so far, would suggest so.
Within 96 hours of the return of the king, four polls were showing a reinvigorated Reform surge, and a couple even suggesting they were within an ace of pushing the Tories into third place.
And the self-proclaimed general of the People’s Army could not be asking for better ground to fight on.
Someone described the 2024 election as like 1997 but with a crap Tony Blair and a better John Major — and it is fair to say neither Starmer nor Sunak is setting the world alight.
As this week’s first TV debate showed, the choice is between two slightly awkward technocrats, both better suited to managing things than firing up a crowd.
Neither is naturally relaxed in front of an audience, especially in the bear-pit debate format that a Johnson or a Blair or a Farage would thrive in.
What is clear from speaking to pretty much everyone, bar the most diehard Tories, is that after 14 years the country is crying out for change. Farage also tapped into the most potent manifestation of that frustration: The feeling that nothing in this country is working at the moment.
From the NHS, to the pothole-strewn roads, the crumbling schools and the streets run by thugs and muggers. Get something nicked or have your front door kicked in? Good luck seeing a rozzer for love nor money.
Claim on the insurance? That’s quadrupled in price in just 12 months.
Want to talk to the taxman about a wages raid so eye-watering that it must surely be a computer glitch? Call back in six weeks . . .
Need a pint to calm down while you wait for your two hour-delayed train? That’ll be £6.20 mate. You what!?
Need to see a doctor for your black eye? That will be six weeks.
It’s very tricky for the Tories to ask for five more years when swathes of the public see them as having spent the last decade and a half letting the country slip into such an expensive state of disrepair.
But Farage knows that for many, Sir Keir is not really the answer.
And many of those p**sed off with the Tories, on borders and boats, are deeply distrusting of a man who just four years ago was still campaigning for free movement and spent the four years before that trying to unpick Brexit and force us all into a second referendum.
That protest vote now has somewhere else to go, and its a lethal pincer that Sunak is in.
So while the natural pendulum of British politics looks set to swing back to Labour, Farage entering the fray means it could well swing very, very far away from the Tories, for a very long time.
But is the answer to fixing one side having 14 years of carte blanche to cock things up, barely unchecked by credible opposition, simply to give the other side a whacking great majority and two terms in Downing Street to do the same?
I’m not sure it is.