Nigel Farage today predicted ‘millions’ more undecided voters could flock to his Reform UK party in the final days before Thursday’s general election.
The Brexit champion addressed a Birmingham rally this afternoon as he attempted to move past a racism row that has engulfed Reform.
In front of a 4,500-strong crowd at the National Exhibition Centre, Mr Farage attacked both Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer ahead of polling day on 4 July.
After he was greeted on stage to chants of ‘Nigel, Nigel, Nigel!’, the Reform leader said: ‘The Establishment don’t want us.
‘You see they’re very happy for Keir to take over from Rishi. Because it’s not actually a change of government, it’s a change of middle management.
‘The idea that Labour represent change is for the birds. It’s going to be more of the same, just perhaps a little bit less competent than the Conservatives if you can even believe that is possible.’
Mr Farage told Reform supporters that ‘we are the story’ of the general election campaign.
‘We are what people are talking about at the breakfast table, at work, at the pub, at the bingo hall – wherever people people go, we are the story.
‘Many millions already have said that they absolutely going to vote for us.
‘But there are many millions more who have simply not made up their minds and they could come to us over the course of the next four days.’
Mr Farage joked today’s rally, for which party sources said they had sold 4,500 tickets as of last night, was ‘the thinking man and thinking woman’s alternative to Glastonbury’.
He told the crowd that Britain is in societal and cultural ‘decline’ and people ‘are getting poorer’
Mr Farage added there are ‘people fearful of going out at night, people scared to even go out to their local pub, knives being carried wholesale by young people in this country – so I am in no doubt we are societal decline.’
Britain is a ‘country that has forgotten what it is,’ he continued, as he explained why he had made a comeback to the political frontline ahead of the general election.
‘A country that’s forgotten where we come from, a country that doesn’t seem to value our culture, our inheritance of what we wish to pass on for our children – so I felt I couldn’t stand aside with all these things going on.’
Reform has been embroiled in a racism row after one of its canvassers was filmed by an undercover Channel 4 News journalist making a string of offensive comments, including referring to Mr Sunak as a ‘f****** p***’.
Mr Farage has claimed that Andrew Parker, the campaigner at the heart of the row, is a ‘paid actor’ who was part of a ‘deliberate attempt to derail our campaign’.
But Mr Parker himself has said his acting work is separate to his volunteering for the party, which he said he started because he was believed in Mr Farage’s message.
Mr Farage this afternoon said the comments made by Mr Parker were part of a ‘smear campaign’ against Reform as he said the ‘bad apples are gone’ and ‘we’ll never have them back’.
The party leader said Mr Parker’s remarks had been ‘used as the biggest smear against us’.
He told the rally: ‘Look, Reform is a new organisation. It’s a start-up and there were requests put out for candidates to stand.
‘Have we had a few bad apples? We have, although to my knowledge nobody involved in an organised betting ring is standing for us, which is something.’
He added: ‘I have to say, the bad apples are gone. We’ll never have them back.’
Reform supporters who gathered in the Birmingham venue this afternoon booed a mention of Mr Sunak’s name during a reference to the PM’s decision to skip a major D-Day event.
They also booed the Tories were for implementing Covid lockdowns during the pandemic crisis.
Addressing the rally before Mr Farage, former Brexit Party MEP Ann Widdecombe said the party would ‘bring common sense back to Britain’ and ‘get rid of woke’.
She said: ‘We stand for two words above all – common sense.’
After accusing the Tories of putting all their ‘eggs in the Rwanda basket’ without a plan B, Ms Widdecombe said there was no reason why Reform UK should not form the official opposition following Thursday’s poll.
‘These next four days are crucial,’ she said, adding that she had ‘heard more common sense’ in the last five years than in her previous 55 years in the Conservative Party.
Entrepreneur and Reform UK donor Zia Yusuf told the ‘Rally for Reform’ in Birmingham that problems with the NHS were ‘unbecoming of Great Britain’ – but praised frontline staff who he said work hard despite ‘awful conditions’.
Claiming political ‘elites’ had ‘catastrophically failed’ the country, Mr Yusuf said: ‘To our young people, I say you are being betrayed, you are being robbed of a fair opportunity.
‘We have been failed by our incompetent political leaders. It does not have to be this way.’
Pledging that ‘change is coming’, Mr Yusuf added that Reform’s movement was built on courage and ‘powered by love’.
To loud applause, the businessman added: ‘Thankfully we have an ace up our sleeve – in Nigel Farage we have a real leader.’
Reform chairman Richard Tice said Net Zero policies are ‘making us poorer’ and ‘the greatest act of financial self-harm ever imposed on a nation by the wallies in Westminster’.
He told the rally: ‘Net zero is making us poorer. It’s killing our jobs. It’s killing our industries. It’s killing our economy.
‘It’s an absolute piece of madness developed in Westminster.
‘I actually believe it’s the greatest act of financial self-harm ever imposed on a nation by the wallies in Westminster.’