Farage makes his move

In a speech in central London on Tuesday, Nigel Farage declared the Tories "irrelevant" across much of the country—a relic in Scotland, a ghost in the Red Wall, a punchline in Wales. And for once, the numbers back him up. Reform now controls 9 out of 10 councils it contested and claims over 235,000 members, which may already rival the decaying husk that is CCHQ.

The core message? Vote Reform, get Reform. The wasted vote argument is over. If you want a real opposition to Labour, Farage argues, don’t split the vote with the party that handed Keir Starmer an 80-seat head start and then disappeared into its own navel.

The strategy is simple and brutal: turn every Conservative weakness into a Reform virtue. Stagnation becomes insurgency. Managerial drift becomes cultural clarity. Farage doesn’t hedge, nuance or triangulate. He throws punches. "This is going to be the biggest political revolution since Labour overtook the Liberals."

It’s not just rhetoric. Reform is building a coalition few in Westminster understand: one that fuses workers and entrepreneurs, welders and sole traders, people who feel punished for producing. The party promises no income tax under £20,000, a bonfire of net zero targets and a war on DEI bureaucracy. For some, it’s libertarian economics; for others, it’s a moral reset.

Farage also pledged to scrap the two-child benefit cap—framed not as a sop to welfare dependency but as support for low-income British families who want children and feel penalised for it. Reform backs a £5,000 transferable tax allowance between married couples and wants to make marriage economically viable again. These are not just fiscal tweaks—they are cultural statements.

He refused, however, to commit to retaining the pensions triple lock — a stance that puts him at odds with Labour, and opens up a line of attack from the Lib Dems.

On immigration, Reform promises zero illegal migrant costs by the end of its first term, an end to asylum hotels and deportations modelled on Australia’s offshore processing regime. Net zero, they say, will be scrapped entirely—alongside DEI spending and quango bloat. The savings, Farage claims, will fund these headline reforms.

Over a full parliament, Farage says this would deliver £350 billion in savings: £225bn from net zero, £35bn from DEI cuts, £20bn from ending migrant hotels and £65bn from quango reductions. Critics say the numbers don’t add up. Farage says they miss the point.

He also condemned the 31-month jail sentence given to Lucy Connolly, a mother who tweeted after the Southport attacks, as “absolutely excessive” — another example, he argued, of two-tier justice.

Farage also threw down the gauntlet to Starmer: a head-to-head debate in a working men's club in the Red Wall. The symbolism was obvious. One man built a party from scratch; the other built a CV for office. The new divide is no longer left vs right. It’s belief vs blandness. Conviction vs calibration.

Starmer, for his part, looks increasingly like a man who has arrived at the destination and forgotten why he made the journey. Farage mocked Starmer’s first speech as Prime Minister, claiming it was so scripted he had to glance at his notes every two seconds. He derided Starmer’s cabinet—including Rachel Reeves and Jonathan Reynolds—as a gallery of policy technocrats without real-world economic experience, pointing out that not one member has built or run a business. For all their talk of stability, what they exude is sterility.

And on immigration, the defining issue of the era, Starmer is evasive. He claims progress while presiding over a net migration figure of 431,000. He mouths slogans about smashing the gangs while boats keep coming. He pledges allegiance to the European Court of Human Rights as if sovereignty were a diplomatic embarrassment.

The legacy parties scoff. But they’ve scoffed before. Farage is betting that this time, the realignment isn't just coming. It's already begun.