Shadow chancellor Mel Stride said: “Today Nigel Farage abandoned hardworking families who live within their means. He thinks taxpayers should pick up the bill for people on benefits to have whatever family size they choose. That simply isn’t fair or economically credible.

“Farage has announced billions in unfunded commitments with fantasy ways to pay for them. It’s Corbynism in a different colour.

“Voters heard the same thing from Labour last year and have been paying for it ever since with higher taxes and the winter fuel payment snatched away.

“Only the Conservatives now stand for sound money and fairness for hardworking families.”

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said Reform UK’s plans to raise the threshold for paying income tax to £20,000 would cost between £50 billion and £80 billion.

Stuart Adam, a senior economist at the research institute, said the announcements on winter fuel and the two-child benefit cap were “dwarfed” by the tax policy.

He told BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme: “Those are all significant things, and they are high-profile new public announcements, but actually they are all still dwarfed by some of the big policies that were in the manifesto last year, and today Nigel Farage recommitted to increasing the income tax allowance to £20,000, which depending on details might cost £50 billion, £60 billion, £70 billion, £80 billion, relative to other policies where we might be talking £1 billion, £2 billion, £3 billion each. So the big story is still those very big tax cuts and how they would ultimately be paid for.”

He added the announcements by Mr Farage this morning were much smaller than last year’s “very radical” manifesto published by Reform UK for the general election.

“As it stands, I don’t think they have really set out how they would pay for such big giveaways,” Mr Adam said. “Of course, they don’t have to do that yet, we’re not yet at a general election. But at some point, if they’re going to be a party of government, they would have to make those numbers add up.”

Nigel Farage dismissed the electoral threat of a Labour Party led by Angela Rayner.

Asked if he believed Ms Rayner could fare better against Reform than Sir Keir Starmer, he said: “Well, at least she is real. None of the rest are. I don’t she has lied on her CV. I am not sure she has got a CV. She is who she is.

“What we have learnt over the course of the last week is that her ideas on tax, on saving, are even more radical than those of Rachel Reeves and she tends on economics to be way, way out on the Left.

“And number one, that is not a majority opinion by any means in the country, nor will it become one. And it is a very busy space. You have got the Lib Dems heading into some of that territory, the Greens very firmly in that territory and indeed, from what I can see of the Gaza independents, they are pretty much of that view as well.

“Maybe she will become the leader, I don’t know. Are we worried about it? Not at all.”

Nigel Farage has declared he believes he can be Prime Minister.

Reform UK is polling at over 30% in the opinions.

Asked the question following his speech, the Reform leader said: “History would suggest the answer to your question is no.

“Circumstances would suggest the answer is yes. Something extraordinary is happening.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage says state spending could face huge cuts.

He listed savings ideas including scrapping net zero, cutting quango funding and reducing the amount spent on the asylum system.

He said: “If you add all that up you have got a pretty eye-watering number of £350 billion. And whilst that may be, I accept, slightly optimistic because it is difficult always to cut everything, I think you can see very clearly the direction that we are going in.”

Nigel Farage refused to commit to keeping the state pension triple lock if Reform UK wins power at the next general election.

Asked if he would commit to the policy for the next parliament, he replied: “Triple lock for pensioners is not something we have addressed as yet.

“We will between now and the next election. We are, as you can see, building out our policy platform.”

The triple lock guarantees that the state pension will rise each year by the highest of earnings, inflation or 2.5 per cent.

Anas Sarwar “introduced sectarianism into Scottish politics,” Nigel Farage has said, ahead of the byelection in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse.

Defending a Facebook video which claims the Scottish Labour leader will “prioritise” the Pakistani community in Scotland, Mr Farage played the video to journalists. The video plays clips of the politician urging more people from South Asian backgrounds to get involved in politics.

He said: “So it was Anas Sarwar that introduced sectarianism into Scottish politics. Making it perfectly clear his priority was to a certain section of the community.

“All we’ve done, all we’ve done is to put out the exact words spoken by him without any comment, we’ve said nothing, just that we will represent the people of that constituency. And the fact that they, having chosen to go down the sectarian route, choose to throw accusations back at us, says to me that we are winning.”

Nigel Farage declares “what you’re witnessing is the beginning of a genuine political revolution, suddenly quite remarkable, that is happening and will continue to happen in British politics.

“If that means I’m pitted against the Prime Minister and whoever the leader of the Conservative Party may be, well, so be it.

“I think I’m ready for that.”

Nigel Farage says he returned to politics to turn the country around.

He said: “I’ve had some great successes in life. I’ve had plenty of failures in life as well.

“But what I bring to this now is experience.

“What I bring to this now is passion.

“What I bring to this now is a kind of courage, or madness, which perhaps you only have when you’ve survived a few close brushes with death and even managed to go through the snake pit on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!

“I’m not afraid of a mob, I’m not afraid of criticism, I’m not afraid of protest.”

The Reform leader turned his anger towards Labour again, telling reporters: “Everything he’s done in the last two weeks will be undone by us in Government, regardless of what the consequences are.

“He doesn’t understand what national sovereignty is. He’s never, ever got over the Brexit result and is frankly doing his bit incrementally to reverse it.”

Nigel Farage said the Chagossian people have suffered “terrible racism in Mauritius, terrible racism.

“And now that this deal is done, they’re now fleeing Mauritius and coming to our country, which they can do, of course, because they are British subjects.

“But I suppose to Keir Starmer, racism only comes from people without university degrees”.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage slammed Keir Starmer’s Chagos Islands deal.

He said: “There was absolutely zero legal necessity to give away the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands.

“None whatsoever.

“An advisory judgment from a court that is not legitimate and that has too much Chinese influence in it.

“And we’re paying to do it.

“If inflation runs, at an average of 3%, for the next 99 years, its £52 billion pounds.

“It’s almost unbelievable that he could have done it.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage warns the fishing industry has been “destroyed” over the “course of the last 50 years”.

He said: “We’ve traded away what was ours, when we first joined the common market, and as I think the only MP with a vested commercial interest in fisheries, which I do, I can’t even tell you what this surrender means.

“The leaders of the French fishing industry associations have said they can’t believe their luck.

“They’re being allowed to fish up to our six-mile line for a further 12 years. It means the death of nearly all of our inshore fishing industries, because the old people retire and the young people won’t come in.

“It is an absolutely horrific betrayal.

“Yet them seem to have no guilt about it.”

Nigel Farage said Keir Starmer “bows down to the concept of international law”.

The Reform UK leader said: “The EU reset, which starts to align us back with EU law, not just that exists today, but that comes in the future, that bring the European Court of Justice back into our lives.

“That is a total sellout, and something that he promised he wouldn’t do.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has vowed to end mass migration.

He told reporters: “I was utterly demonised 10, 20 years ago, by suggesting that opening the doors would lead to bad people coming into Britain.”

Pointing to crime gangs, Mr Farage said: “If you look at the crime statistics in London and elsewhere of the gangs that have been allowed to come in from Romania, Albania, I do believe I was absolutely right”.

Nigel Farage said diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) schemes, alongside net zero, would be axed under Reform.

He said “DEI must go” and claims there is now “open discrimination against white people” in job advertisements.

DEI is costing the taxpayer £7billion per year, Farage suggests.

Mr Farage said: “I think we’ve lost our sense of focus, of just how important family is”.

He backed the lifting of the two-child benefit cap, says we need to go “we want to go much, much further to encourage people to have children, to make it easier for them to have children”.

He said scrapping two-child benefit is the “right thing to do”.

Nigel Farage issued an invitation to the Prime Minister to visit a red wall seat together to see who best connects with working people.

Sir Keir Starmer had told Farage he would be up for a debate before the next election but the Reform leader insisted four years was too long to wait.

Nigel Farage has slammed Sir Keir Starmer during his press conference on Tuesday.

He accused Sir Keir of not believing in anything.

The Reform leader called the Prime Minister’s plans to “smash the gangs” a farce.

Mr Farage took aim at Sir Keir’s leadership style, calling it “dismal”, “uninspiring”, “disconnected from real life” and “unpatriotic”.

He said: “It is clear to me that this man doesn’t believe in anything. You would have thought there was a plan, you would have thought there was a passion for what they would do in government. We see that lack of any political thought, with the daily veering off left and right. Nobody believes him because of his own record.

“This prime minister has no connection with working people. ‘He doesn’t understand what it’s like to get up at 5am and work hard for the day. He doesn’t understand that the cost of living has meant people have had, quite consistently a lower standard of living ‘He has no conception as part of the North London set of the genuine damage done by mass migration to communities.”

Nigel Farage said Labour “has a problem with personalities” – in particular “Rachel from complaints”.

He accused the “low grade government” of being only “doom and gloom” about the economy.

On the Chancellor, Ms Reeves said: “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone so hopelessly out of their depths in my professional career… she’s Rachel from complaints”

Turning to Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, Mr Farage said: “Ever-affable but not quite the qualified solicitor he told everyone he was”.

Nigel Farage has taken aim at Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick.

He said a return by Boris Johnson would not help either.

Reform UK’s leader said the Tories “will not be trusted” again. He called the 200-year-old party “completely irrelevant”.

Opening the press conference, Nigel Farage has paid tribute to members of the public and emergency workers impacted by the incident in Liverpool on Monday night.

Reform’s chair Zia Yusuf points out Reform has had huge success just one year since Nigel Farage’s return to frontline politics.

He announced he would stand as an MP and become leader of Reform UK on June 3 2024.

Mr Yusuf said his party has ended the “stranglehold” the Tories and Labour have had on British politics for the last century He said it is “in no small part due to an extraordinary man”, before introducing Nigel Farage.

Sarah Pochin, Reform’s newest MP, has taken to the stage to introduce Nigel Farage.

She won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election earlier this month by six votes.

She said her victory means a vote for reform “can no longer be brushed aside as a protest vote”.

The Conservatives are unlikely to win the next election if they are seen as the party of big business and millionaires. The Tories have flourished when they win the trust of working people and deliver policies which improve their lives; Margaret Thatcher turbo-charged a social revolution through her policies to allow people to own their own council homes, for example, and the push for ordinary people to buy shares in privatised utilities was unprecedented.

In the last parliament, there were regular calls within the Conservative party to address blue collar workers and their concerns. There are Tories who are deeply concerned about the rise of major online retailers and the impact this has on high streets and town centres. If Reform hoovers up votes among working class conservatives then Kemi Badenoch’s party is profound trouble.

Reform will present itself as an unashamed champion of working people. It is also pursuing the votes of pensioners – the group most likely to vote in an election – and the group where Tories have some of their strongest support.

Once again, Mr Farage is causing headaches for both the Labour and Conservative leaders.

Nigel Farage will accuse Sir Keir of being “a man that puts international courts before British sovereignty” and the “most unpatriotic PM in history”, the source said.

“He and his government are so hopelessly out of touch with working people. They U-turn on everything as they do not believe in anything.”

Mr Farage is expected to punch a Labour bruise by committing to scrapping the two-child benefit cap and reinstating the winter fuel payment, issues which are causing Sir Keir and Chancellor Rachel Reeves problems with their voters and MPs.

He is also expected to accuse Labour of lacking the will to bring net migration down to zero, and claim Sir Keir’s deal with the EU “betrays the very essence of Brexit”.

Since the election, Nigel Farage has promised to take on Labour. It’s a huge worry in Labour circles that Reform may make breakthroughs in traditional Labour strongholds which Boris Johnson couldn’t turn blue in 2019. The thinking is that in many former industrial heartlands there is still a social stigma to voting Conservative – even though voters may prefer Tory policies – but there are far fewer reservations about voting Reform.Nigel Farage’s party is accelerating towards next year’s Welsh Parliament elections, which will be a huge test of how well the party is doing on delivering on its ambitions to oust Labour. There has always been a Labour First Minister/First Secretary in Wales since devolution started in 1999. Reform makes no secret of its ambition to stage an electoral earthquake there.

Nigel Farage will launch a direct attack on “unpatriotic” and “out-of-touch” Sir Keir Starmer, as he positions Reform UK as the true opposition to Labour.

The Reform leader will use a major speech on Tuesday to accuse the Prime Minister of “betrayal” over his deal with the European Union and the handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

Allies said it was a “coming-of-age moment” for Reform after its successes in May’s council contests and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, which demonstrated that backing the party at the ballot box was not a wasted vote.

The speech, framed as Mr Farage’s “pitch to working people” will see the Reform leader flanked by council leaders, mayors and Runcorn MP Sarah Pochin.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is to make his “pitch to working people” by committing to scrapping the two-child benefit cap and reinstating the winter fuel payment.

Ms Phillipson said Mr Farage’s party is “not serious”.

She told Sky News: “Reform previously supported introducing, or the predecessor party, supported introducing the two-child cap.

“I don’t think it’s serious to suggest that millionaires should receive the winter fuel allowance, but we are committed to ensuring that more pensioners can benefit from the winter fuel allowance, as the Prime Minister said last week.

“Reform are the people that don’t believe in the NHS, working people would be lost without the NHS. They don’t believe in it in its current form. They don’t believe in it into the future. They would seek to dismantle it as it exists now, free at the point of need.

“That’s who Reform are. It’s just not serious. They’re not on the side of working people.”

Reform UK’s newest MP has said that the party in government would “completely reinstate” the winter fuel allowance and scrap the two-child benefit cap.

Sarah Pochin told Times Radio: “A Reform government will completely reinstate the winter fuel allowance across the board.

“Why should people who have worked so hard all their lives, paid their taxes, they get to retirement, and they get this payment taken away. It’s an absolute betrayal of that generation.”

She also said that Reform would “support hard working families” with changes to the Married Couples Allowance and the two-child benefit cap “going out the window”.

Bridget Phillipson told LBC of child poverty: “It damages their life chances.

“But it’s not just about those individual children, important though they are.

“It’s terrible for all of us. It’s terrible for our society. It damages us all.

“And this Labour government will make different choices about how we back families, how we back children.

“We’ve already started some of that. There’s more to do. We’re expanding childcare, we’re investing in new free breakfast clubs, we’re increasing the minimum wage.

“We’re going to cut the cost of school uniform to parents. That’s about putting money back into parents’ pockets so that they can make choices about how they support their families.”

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson dodges questions on whether she supports scrapping the two-child benefit cap.

She said: “Well, it wasn’t something that we introduced as a government.

“It was something the Conservatives introduced, and we are looking at it.

“We’re looking at all measures that we can use to bring down child poverty, including Social Security.

“And the reason that we set up the Child Poverty Task Force, why the Prime Minister set it up, I co-chair it with the Work and Pensions Secretary, is because this Labour government is determined to bring down the numbers of children growing up in poverty.

“It’s why I came into politics.

“It’s what I believe passionately. I know that too many children in our country are scarred by child poverty, including here in Sunderland.”

Labour branded Nigel Farage a “private-educated stockbroker and career politician” in an attack ahead of his speech.

Ellie Reeves, chairwoman of the Labour Party, said: “Nigel Farage, a private-educated stockbroker and career politician, has only ever cared about his own self-interest and personal ambition, never about what is good for working people in this country.

“Farage wants to abolish the NHS, praised Liz Truss’s disastrous minibudget, opposed Labour’s landmark employment reforms and said Jaguar Land Rover, a huge employer, deserves to go bust.

“His Reform manifesto included billions of pounds worth of unfunded spending pledges but did not commit to the triple lock. Farage must urgently clarify whether he will cut the state pension to pay for his reckless tax cuts.

“Keir Starmer’s Labour government is delivering real improvement to working people’s lives through our ‘plan for change’ that has seen NHS waiting lists fall, wages rising faster than prices, and four interest rate cuts in a year, turbocharged by a trio of trade deals that are good for jobs, bills and borders.”

It comes ahead of Mr Farage accusing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of being “one of the most unpatriotic prime ministers in our history”.

He will add: “Starmer … is the most disconnected prime minister. He doesn’t believe in our country and voters are starting to see this with each day that passes.

“Labour said they were the party of change, but the change they have delivered has made people poorer, our streets more dangerous and British sovereignty weaker. He and his government are so hopelessly out of touch with working people. They U-turn on everything as they do not believe in anything.

“In ten months, his Labour government has let down countless individual communities. Pensioners, farmers, businesses, fishermen. They will not forget what Labour has done and they will vote for Reform.”

The Reform UK, outlining his plans to encourage more people ot have bigger families, will declare: “We need to encourage people to have families and ensure they feel financially able to have them.

“The collapsing birth rate in the UK, now well below the rates needed, is an existential crisis for our country. The Tories and Labour have sought to solve it with open borders.

“A Reform government will cut net immigration to zero and do everything in its power to encourage British people who are able and want kids to have them.

“Scrapping the two-child [benefit] cap is just the start. We will, as soon as finances allow, introduce a UK 25 per cent transferable marriage tax allowance.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will also pledge to scrap the two-child benefits cap.

Mr Farage has said he will commit to ending the two-child cap, which was introduced by the Conservatives in 2017 to cut the benefits bill.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is facing a mounting backlash from his own MPs over the cap.

The Reform UK leader will today make a series of pledges linked to “family”, including a proposal to give tax breaks to married couples to encourage people to have bigger families.

Mr Farage’s plans will see one spouse exempted from paying tax on the first £25,000 of their income, the Daily Mail reported.

The other would enjoy a tax-free income of £20,000, the level at which the party has promised to raise the threshold for the basic rate.

Workers currently pay the 20 per cent rate of income tax on everything between £12,570 and £50,270.