Reform can’t answer basic questions…
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been left stumped on the campaign trail ahead of local elections due to take place on May 1,, when asked how he intended to fund his party’s policies which would involve billions of pounds of additional spending.
Populists like Farage are not used to scrutiny, and when it does occur they often fall apart.
In a bid to appeal to voters, Farage has said his party would reverse Labour’s decision to means test winter fuel payments, scrap the rise in employers’ National Insurance payments and end the changes to inheritance tax opposed by farmers.
His policies have raised eyebrows, and with Reform coming under growing scrutiny questions have been asked of how such policies will be funded.
At a press conference in County Durham, Farage was asked by The Guardian: “Do you have a plan for how you’d pay for all these economic plans, and if you don’t do you risk slightly conning voters?”
Farage sought to deflect attention away from how his party would fund its pledges, instead choosing to focus on national debt as part of a long winded answer.
He replied: “Well, I tell you what. I tell you who’s been conned … in 15 years, we’ve gone from an accumulated national debt of nearly £1 trillion to one of £2.8tn. So has anybody been frank with voters about how they’re going to pay for anything? Let’s be honest about it.
“We have deep problems. The re-industrialisation of Britain, beginning with energy, with oil and gas, will, within a couple of years, produce tens of thousands of well paid – in fact, in many cases, highly paid – jobs.
“And it depends how much time we have, but if we can get our hands on the regulators, the quangos who do so much to stifle business. Every small trader I talk to, no matter what they’re doing, their business, is being impaired by unnecessary excessive regulation.”
That doesn’t answer how Farage will fund his pledges worth billions of pounds!
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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