Policies include personal tax cuts and life imprisonment for drug dealers in ‘contract’ with British public
Nigel Farage has launched the Reform UK manifesto with a number of populist pledges including proposed spending of £141bn a year as the rightwing party seeks to make inroads into Labour heartlands.
Policies in the Reform programme, which Farage claimed was not a manifesto but a “contract” with the British public, included axing the net zero plan entirely and introducing life imprisonment for convicted drug dealers, along with wide-ranging cuts to personal tax, which have been greeted with scepticism by economists.
Tax cuts include raising the minimum threshold for income tax to £20,000 a year, abolishing stamp duty and abolishing inheritance tax for all estates under £2m.
Reform said it planned to fund the cuts by raising £40bn from reducing the interest paid on Bank of England reserves.
Launching the party’s election pledges in Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, Farage said the former industrial town was “skint” and “in real trouble” as he suggested having a “slimmed-down public sector” while maintaining services.
Farage claimed that Reform’s plans amounted to a “fundamental change” of Britain’s economy and society and that the biggest beneficiaries would be people “trapped on benefits”.
“There is a lot more here for those on the lower end of the income scale than anyone else,” he said.
However, the manifesto advocates abolishing inheritance tax for all estates, as well as reducing the corporation tax rate from 25% to 20%.
The document also makes a play for social conservatives with calls for marriage to be supported with a 25% transferable marriage tax allowance, allowing for no tax on the first £25,000 of income for either spouse.
The party would freeze “non-essential” immigration, pull Britain out of the European convention on human rights and “pick up illegal migrants out of boats and take them back to France”.
On law and order, the party backed mass stop and search policies, with Farage telling the event that it was time for the police to “stop worrying about whether they are called prejudiced”.
