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.

Speaker’s Statement

Nigel Farage Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. The first time I met John Prescott in his role as Deputy Prime Minister was in 1997, when he opened up Admiralty Arch to 60 young homeless people as part of the winter shelter programme. It was a bitterly cold winter, and at the time, the Conservative Back Bencher Crispin Blunt said that this project would be treating a historic building as if it were a “flagship for undesirables”. Given that John was frequently described as an undesirable by many of his opponents throughout his life, he took that as a badge of honour, and he was really proud of that homelessness project. I will never forget the way he shared breakfast with those rough sleepers and took a real interest in every one of their lives. It was a testimony to his compassion, his practical politics, and his unwavering commitment to housing policy. Many millions of council tenants saw home improvements—new windows, new doors and home insulation—and none of them will ever forget that. Those are the basics that many of us take for granted, but which far too many people lacked at the time.

In a superb biography by my late former colleague on The Independent, Colin Brown, naturally entitled “Fighting Talk”, there was a lovely and telling quote from John:

“There are those priests of the Left who want to keep their consciences and there are those who will get their hands dirty. I belong to the dirty hands brigade.”

John was regularly patronised and frequently under-estimated, but he had the last laugh by delivering for real working people. For that, we are all grateful.

[Nigel Farage (Clacton) (Reform)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. In the last six months of 2005, the United Kingdom took over the rotating presidency of the European Union, and Prime Minister Blair wanted to make a big success of it. One of his concerns was that there was a young British MEP who was prone to behaving very badly in the Chamber and being particularly rude to visiting Heads of State, so John Prescott was sent to see me. He himself, of course, had served as an MEP and was a big project supporter—he loved everything about the European Union—so he came to explain to me that it would be very bad for Britain if I were to stand up and cause a scene when Prime Minister Blair was speaking. I will not say that he threatened me, but I certainly felt deeply intimidated and behaved myself impeccably over the course of the next six months. That was the bruiser John Prescott perhaps.

A couple of years later, on Remembrance Sunday, when the ceremony was over and the parades had finished, I was walking up Whitehall and there, to my astonishment, walking on his own and without any security, was the Deputy Prime Minister. I said hello and wondered what he was doing. John had seen a group of Arctic convoy veterans on the other side of Whitehall. A seafarer himself, he had gone over to speak to the men who had endured such appalling hardship during the last couple of years of the war, and said to them, “I’m going to fight to make sure that you guys get a campaign medal after all these years, recognising what you’ve done.” They did get the medal, and I got the message. I understood why he had been so phenomenally successful from humble roots: he connected, he got on with people and he was very human. We mourn his passing, but perhaps we also mourn the passing of big working-class characters in politics. We need far more of them.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. As you well know, John had many connections with the north-west of England. He went to school on the Wirral. He was a parliamentary candidate in Southport, and he returned there to campaign in the 2017 general election. He was a seafarer out of Liverpool, and he was presented with a trophy by Anthony Eden, whom the Prime Minister mentioned. The trophy was for winning a boxing bout on board ship, and it was there that he honed the craft that may have led to what he was known so famously for later on.

When I came here in 2010, I bumped into John in the Committee corridor, where he was sitting at a desk working. He said he was there because, despite being a former Deputy Prime Minister, he had to share an office with four other Members of the House of Lords—he had recently been ennobled—and he moaned about the fact that there was no preferential treatment for him. However, despite the moan, he was getting on with the job, as John always did.

My favourite story of him is when, during the 2010 election campaign, the battle bus turned up on grand national day outside Aintree racecourse. He had a campaign to keep the grand national free-to-air on terrestrial TV, and there he was with his loudspeakers haranguing the racegoers to come and sign his petition, which they did in droves. Not only did they sign the petition, but they queued in large numbers for selfies with John. That goes to the point about the affection in which he was held, and the impression that John made that day will stay with me forever.

When I came here and was serving in this place, as he was serving in the Lords, he was a source of terrific advice to me, and I am proud to have counted John as a friend over the years. I send my best wishes to Pauline, David and the rest of his family. May John rest in peace.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Farage Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What happened to Bethany is appalling, and my thoughts, as I am sure are those of the whole House, are with her family. We need a culture shift here, and we have committed to halving violence against women and girls in a decade. No Government have ever made that commitment before, and I hope that can be something that is shared across the House, because this is so important. It starts with that central question of belief and confidence: for every woman or young woman who comes forward, there are probably about nine who never had the confidence to come forward, and this starts with belief and the culture that we put in place. We are committed to that, and I invite the whole House to join us on that mission to halve violence against women and girls.

[Nigel Farage (Clacton) (Reform)]

Q9. I am sure the Prime Minister and the whole House would wish to congratulate Donald Trump on his landslide victory last week—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I will hear the question.

[Nigel Farage]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Within a couple of days we had learned of a third assassination attempt. Charges have been laid, and behind it is Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Has the time not come to proscribe what is so obviously a terrorist organisation, and in doing so, not just do the right thing, but perhaps mend some fences between this Government and the incoming presidency of Donald Trump, given that the whole of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet have been so rude about him over the last few years?

[The Prime Minister]

I am glad to see the hon. Member making a rare appearance back here in Britain. He has spent so much time in America recently that I was half expecting to see him in the immigration statistics when we see the next batch—[Interruption.] He may have missed it, but I congratulated the incoming President last week, and we will work with him. The point the hon. Member makes about Iran is very serious, and we will work across the House and with our allies on it. Obviously on the question of proscription, we keep that under review.

Election of Speaker

Nigel Farage Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Farage (Clacton) (Reform)]

Mr Speaker-Elect, thank you very much. We are the new kids on the block. We have no experience in this Parliament whatsoever, even though some of us have tried many times over the years to get here, so we cannot judge you from working in this place, but we can judge you from how the outside world sees you. I mean not just the United Kingdom but the world, because Prime Minister’s question time is global, box office politics. It is pretty clear to everyone that you act with great neutrality and that you have brought tremendous dignity to the role as Speaker, so we absolutely endorse you entirely for this job. That is, I must say, in marked contrast to the little man who was there before you, who besmirched the office so dreadfully in doing his best to overturn the biggest democratic result in the history of the country. We support you fully, Sir.

[Mr Speaker-Elect]

I call the leader of Plaid Cymru.