General Election

Nigel Farage Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Farage (Clacton) (Reform)]

I generally find that the best ideas in life come from pubs, so it is no particular surprise that Michael Westwood is a publican. I represent Clacton, which has the third highest number of people who signed the petition. I do not think that the 8,000 people in Clacton who signed it did so just to get a fresh general election. They knew that that would not happen; what they were actually expressing was a sense of utter disenchantment with the entire political system.

The debate this afternoon can be used as a game of ping-pong between the two political parties that have dominated British politics since the end of the first world war, but actually something bigger is going on out there. Have a look at the turnout, which was the second lowest ever at a general election, despite the introduction of mass postal voting. Have a think about the fact that the Labour party got a third of the vote and two thirds of the seats. For every Labour MP there are 34,000 votes; for every Reform MP there are 820,000 votes. When we think about that and give it some context, perhaps it is not surprising that confidence in the whole system is breaking down.

Having studied politics for a long time—not as long as the Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), obviously, but over 50 years—I cannot think of a Government who have seen a collapse in confidence as quickly as this one. There are 26,000 pensioners in the constituency of Clacton alone who are losing their winter fuel allowance; they had no idea on the day of the general election that that was going to happen. There are 100 family farms in the Clacton constituency; many of the farmers I have met are frankly in tears, because they cannot see how their husbandry of that land, which in some cases has gone on for hundreds of years, will be able to survive inheritance tax.

The national insurance increases are yet another hammer blow for the men and women running small businesses in this country. They had not expected it; they were promised in the run-up to the general election that it would not happen. We now find that even GP surgeries in the constituency and hospices close to it are affected, so perhaps we can see why people are upset: they feel that things are being done to them that they did not have realistic expectations of.

The broader problem, I think, is the economy as a whole. The economy works on confidence: people borrow money and lend money according to confidence in each other. In the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, we have two people who look as if they are going to a family funeral every day. There is an air of miserabilism. Even a speech from the Prime Minister is the complete opposite of one from Tony Blair: not “Things can only get better”, but “Things can only get worse”.

[Dawn Butler]

If the hon. Member came into a new job and discovered a £22 billion black hole, I think he would look a bit miserable as well.

[Nigel Farage]

The idea of a £22 billion black hole is nonsense. It is £2.7 trillion. The national debt is massive. It exploded over the course of the last 14 years—it increased two and a half times—and it is set to go higher still, so we are in much deeper difficulties economically. Even to talk about a £22 billion black hole is not to understand the problems that we have. We have zero growth in this country. As for foreign investment into Britain, yes, there is money coming in, but it is not coming in at anywhere near the rate we need. We have major, major problems. I actually believe that this Government have talked us into a recession, because confidence is falling to that degree.

Members might note that the more rapidly legal migration rises—the more rapidly the population expands —the poorer we get as individuals. In the last two years, we have seen record levels of net migration into Britain, and in six of the last eight quarters, GDP per capita has fallen. Ultimately, the issue that led 3 million people to ask for another general election is perhaps the breach of trust between Westminster and the country on immigration. I am not even discussing the boats; I am talking about the impact of the population rising by more than 10 million in the past 20 years on primary school availability, housing and people’s wages. That is the ultimate breach of trust. Labour Members have not promised anything at all on legal immigration, but they need to be aware that if the net migration figures are anywhere near what they have been in the past few years, confidence in their party will fall further.

I think the whole system is in need of absolute, fundamental change, and I suspect that this petition is just a symptom of a much bigger cry for a different kind of politics in the United Kingdom. Members can con themselves as much as they like, but the old two-party system is breaking up before our eyes. The next general election is going to see a very, very different Parliament.