markstevens

The Receipts UK ♿ @david_hollas

Farage's Conference Speech: Emergency Powers, Lords Reform and a 2027 Election Bet Nigel Farage's keynote speech at Reform UK's Birmingham conference was delayed by over an hour after a security scare, when climate campaigners unfurled a banner reading "Reform works for billionaires" on stage. At least four separate protests interrupted the speech itself, with hecklers thrown out to booing from the hall. Farage told delegates he would not be "distracted" by "a highly co-ordinated campaign of attacks." The core of the speech set out what Reform would do in its first 100 days in government. Farage said he would declare a "national emergency" on day one, with stopping small boat crossings, which he said he would take personal charge of, and cutting the cost of living as immediate priorities. He said the party would introduce "dozens of bills" immediately and force Parliament to sit "day and night", six days a week through the summer if necessary, until they passed. Ministers who missed their 100-day targets would be sacked. On institutional resistance, Farage said: "If the Lords, judiciary or civil service get in our way, they will discover just how determined we are." He raised the prospect of appointing hundreds of new peers to the House of Lords and, if necessary, a referendum on the composition of the upper house. He said civil servants who would not implement the programme would be replaced. On election timing, Farage repeated his prediction of a spring 2027 general election, arguing Labour's economic troubles under Andy Burnham would force an early poll. He referred to Burnham as "the messiah without a mandate", a line that originated as a Mail on Sunday headline in July when Burnham took office, and said "we deserve a general election." He said Britain "doesn't have 10 years to be saved." The speech came on the same day Farage addressed the donations scandal that broke on Thursday. At a press conference alongside National Rally's Jordan Bardella, he described the conduct of Dan Jukes and James Orr, who stepped down from their posts on Friday morning, as "loose pub talk" and "a bit of jack-the-lad-dery," while maintaining "we have not taken an illegal penny in funding" and that Reform "take compliance around donations very, very seriously." He said other donor names referenced on the tape but bleeped by Channel 4 were not broadcast because the claims were "simply not true", adding: "Donations from the names that were mentioned had not occurred, don't exist on the old comms site, don't exist in our accounts." Verbatim, the group behind the investigation, has said the plots "were proposed by Mr Jukes and Mr Orr, not by our journalists." Sounds like a dictatorship to me.