by Nigel Farage said Sir Keir Starmer’s new Government “could be in trouble pretty quickly” as he watched a football club’s first match in Essex with Reform UK’s fifth MP.
The Reform leader who is also the new MP for Clacton, was watching East Thurrock Community Football Club in Corringham on Saturday evening with James McMurdock, who won the seat of Basildon South and Thurrock East on Friday.
Mr McMurdock won the seat with a majority of 98 Labor votes, which meant that Reform gained five seats in the House of Commons.
Mr Farage received a warm welcome at Wyldecrest Sports Country Club, where he posed for photos with locals, drank a pint and had a cigarette out while watching the football match.
He met a boy who asked him to say “Brexit means Brexit” to be recorded on a phone, which the leader of Reform UK did.
Speaking before kick-off, Mr Farage said that “with a few exceptions”, the new Cabinet would be “the most inexperienced people ever to enter a British Cabinet”.
Asked for his views on Sir Keir’s new Cabinet, Mr Farage said: “With a few exceptions, I think they are the most inexperienced people ever to join a British cabinet.
“If you look at their life stories, their backgrounds and remember, these are people who make executive decisions that fundamentally affect people’s lives, I think it will be very difficult for them. And I say, because there are some fundamental problems facing the country, I suspect that this Government could be in trouble quite quickly.”
Asked to respond to the Prime Minister ending the Rwanda scheme, Mr Farage said: “Well he said he would do it, at least he’s kept his promise I think.
“See, Rwanda has never worked. What Keir Starmer is proposing, which is to tackle the gangs, well, frankly, you know, the last Government was doing that for the last few years, it’s not going to work.
“It’s wild and windy at the moment, but we have some pretty strong personal accounts that as soon as we have a calm spell, they’ll be crossing the English Channel in their thousands, and let’s face it, Keir Starmer doesn’t. have a plan to deal with it.”
The Reform UK leader said his aim is to “build a mass movement for real change before the next set of elections”.
He said: “We will do what we can with five people in Parliament, what I will definitely do is to provide a real opposition in the country.
“And my aim and ambition is to build a mass movement for real change, before the next series of elections.”
Asked how he would sell proportional representation to the public, Mr Farage said: “Well, given that each Reform MP has 800,000 voters, and each Labor MP has 30,000 voters, it suggests that something very bad, fundamentally wrong.”
He said: “We have five MPs, PR would give us 97 MPs, but we are where we are.”
Asked who he would like to see as leader of the Conservative Party, Mr Farage said: “Honestly, I don’t think it matters who they choose as leader. This party is split down the middle, they call it a broad church, however, it is a broad church with no common beliefs.”
Mr Farage said the reform would do “very, very well” in the Parliamentary election and based on how it fared in Scotland during the General Election, the party would be “very much in the also win a seat in the Scottish Parliament” .
A local councilor met Mr Farage and told him he was a former Conservative councillor, currently sitting as an independent but was planning to join Reform UK.
Alex Anderson, from Stanford, who is a councilor on Thurrock Council, said after meeting Mr Farage that he was elected in 2018, re-elected in 2022, both times as a Conservative candidate.
He said there was a “disagreement over the budget a few months ago with the Conservative administration”, which meant he “voted against the council tax increase”, if the whip were suspended and he is now an independent.
Mr Anderson said he spoke to Mr Farage about the General Election and how “remarkable” it was for Reform to get 4.1 million votes.
Five UK Reform MPs have now defended Lee Anderson in Ashfield while party chairman Richard Tice won Boston and Skegness and former Southampton FC chairman Rupert Lowe won Great Yarmouth, both at the expense of the Tories.
It comes after Mr Farage made a “100% commitment” to rid Reform UK of “bad apples”, as multiple protesters disrupted an event designed to celebrate the party’s election performance on Friday evening.
He faced a barrage of heckles from protesters in the audience as he tried to start a speech in central London to celebrate what the party described as a “political earthquake”.
After claiming that the General Election showed “no enthusiasm” for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour, Mr Farage reiterated his party’s ambitions to act as opposition to the new Government.
Mr Farage also said he was “launching criminal legal action” against Vetting.Com’s Colin Bloom as he vowed to “professionalise” Reform UK.
When faced with a question about the racism involved in the party, its leader again blamed the firm he had contracted to vet candidates.
Mr Farage called Friday’s event “a full house” when he spoke in Essex on Saturday.
He said: “Well, it was full in the theater wasn’t it? We had protesters, I probably enjoyed it more than they did.
“But no, I mean, look, the one thing I do about press conferences, in complete contrast to what Sunak and Starmer were doing, is that we will take questions from any press organization, we’re not afraid before anything.”
Although Reform UK was founded in 2018, Mr Farage tried to become an MP several times without success.
He was a member of the European Parliament for 20 years, during which time he campaigned hard for the UK to leave the EU.
