Nigel Farage pledges to ‘build more roads’ and bring down bills as Reform UK target Barnsley seats

On a visit to Barnsley on the Reform UK battle bus, leader Nigel Farage said that the party pledges to use UK gas to bring down energy bills, build more roads, and raise the tax threshold.

He added that Reform has targeted seats in Barnsley in the upcoming general election due to the way the borough voted for Brexit – 68 per cent of Barnsley voted to leave the EU in 2016.

The Barnsley North, formerly Barnsley Central seat, has become an unexpected bellwether seat according to the Telegraph, after Nigel Farage announced he was returning as leader of Reform UK last week.

A YouGov poll found that last week, 52 per cent of 2019 Conservative voters who are now planning to vote Reform UK, rated their likelihood to back their new party at 10 out of 10. Following Farage’s return, that figure has risen to 64 per cent.

Ninety-four per cent of those who voted Conservative in 2019 have a favourable view of Nigel Farage, compared to only 24 per cent for Rishi Sunak.

The seat, currently held by Labour’s Dan Jarvis, will be contested by the Liberal Democrats, Yorkshire Party, Green Party, Conservatives, English Democratic Party, and an Independent.

In 2019, the Brexit Party candidate won 30 per cent of the vote, compared to Mr Jarvis’ 40 per cent – the highest Brexit Party vote share at the 2019 general election.

Mr Farage believes his candidates stand a change in Barnsley – and has stood candidates in all three seats.

“The Conservatives have, to a large extent, betrayed the Brexit vote,” said Mr Farage on his election battle bus as it drove through Barnsley. “I can’t see Starmer making any improvements on that whatsoever. I see a population explosion in Britain, caused by open door immigration. The impact of that on people’s lives is negative. It’s making us poorer, it’s making it harder to get GP appointments.

“I’ve come out of retirement…because I genuinely believe that what the Labour and Conservative leaders feel is not what the people of this country by a large majority feel in their hearts. A Labour government seems unconcerned by this, the Tory government, frankly they’ve lied to us.”

When asked about candidates who had been dropped by Reform UK over accusations they made racist comments on social media, Mr Farage said: “Our candidates are not part of the Oxbridge University political class.

“They often speak very bluntly. If I were to discover that we had candidates who really, really, really harbour deeply unpleasant views, then of course I would not condone [it].”

When asked about public transport policies, Mr Farage said: “I’ll tell you what we will do – build more roads. We have to. You cannot exist with the current road network, the population has risen by six million by 2010. You try driving anywhere, it’s a nightmare.”

Next Monday Reform UK will launch its manifesto, detailing its policies.

When asked what Reform UK will do to ease the cost of living crisis, Mr Farage said that he would raise the tax threshold to £20,000, in a bid to ‘encourage those on benefits to go to work’.

“Wake up and smell the coffee, we are going to be using oil and gas, even the climate change lobby accept that, so why are we importing vast amounts of it, when in the case of gas, we can produce our own and give people much, much cheaper bills?

Mr Farage added that migration was leading to rent costs going ‘through the roof’.

“We literally cannot build houses quickly enough, if net migration was zero, rents would stop going up.”