Reform UK will unveil a tax-cutting manifesto which is likely to pave the way for swingeing public sector cuts in their manifesto document today.
The new document - which leader Nigel Farage is insisting is a "contract" with the British people rather than a traditional election manifesto - will be unveiled in Wales on Monday. He and chair Richard Tice will announce calls to abolish the television licence fee in order to take on what they describe as the "institutionally biased" BBC.
Reform are also proposing a migrant tax, which would slap an increased national insurance rate of 20% on each foreign worker a business hires. Britain would leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) - having been a founding member after World War II - and send migrants for processing in British overseas territories. But the manifesto launch threatens to be overshadowed by the resignation of a party candidate who was found to have supported the BNP.
Grant StClair-Armstrong is registered as Reform's candidate for North West Essex, where he is running against Tory business secretary Kemi Badenoch. He has now been forced to quit the party after blog posts from 2010 resurfaced, in which he called for people to vote for the British National Party.
The Times reports he posted: "I could weep now, every time I pick up a British newspaper and read the latest about the state of the UK. No doubt, Enoch Powell would be doing the same if he was alive. My solution … vote BNP!" " A Reform UK spokesperson told the BBC that the party had "accepted his resignation" over "unacceptable historic social media comments".
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Grant StClair-Armstrong has quit Reform after the North West Essex candidate was found to have previously endorsed the BNP (Reform Party)In Reform’s new manifesto-style party document, they will call for St George’s Day and St David’s Day to made public holidays, and for a Free Speech Bill to stop organisations imposing what they call “left-wing bias and politically correct ideology”. They will also unveil a "Great British Tax Cut". The income tax personal allowance would increase to £20,000 from £12,570, where it has been frozen since March 2021. Stamp duty would be scrapped on properties worth less than £750,000, and inheritance tax would be axed on estates worth less than £2million.
Reform claims these huge commitments can be funded by "slashing public sector back office bureaucracy" worth £50billion a year. But in reality it is likely to mean swingeing austerity-style cuts to vital services.
Chairman Richard Tice said: "The British taxpayer is being suffocated by record peacetime taxes and a cost of living crisis under this incompetent Tory government and things will get worse with Labour, a party obsessed with taking and wasting your money. Wages have also stagnated due to the establishment’s deadly addiction to mass immigration making a tax cut for British workers more necessary than ever".
Mr Farage meanwhile told BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning this his plan was to get his right-wing outfit into Parliament and to use this as the basis for a “big national campaigning movement around the country over the course of the next five years" to secure "genuine change". Asked if he would be vying to be PM at the next election, Mr Farage told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "Yes, absolutely."
Farage is currently hoping to be elected MP for Clacton-on-sea in Essex, after failing seven times on previous attempts to be elected to the Commons. Taking aim at the Reform leader, Labour leader Keir Starmer said at his party's manifesto launch last week: “If you want politics as pantomime, I hear Clacton is nice this time of year.”
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