What a party. What an amazing, amazing group of brilliant,
wonderful Reformers. It's incredible. The size, the scale, the
energy, the enthusiasm, the excitement, the hope and an
incredible two days, ladies and gentlemen, that we have had, and
to listen just then to Lucy, who I had the privilege of meeting a
couple of months ago in a slightly different location. It's
wonderful to see her back with us and to hear her direct, telling
her story, and I think that she has a huge opportunity to help
Reform and help the cause of free speech.
Now, these events don't just happen. They don't just happen,
ladies and gentlemen, they take a massive amount of work. And I
just want to say a huge thank you to our chairman, , who never gets any thanks and
his team, Aaron Lobo, they've been amazing, absolutely
incredible. And just to clarify, David does have more hairspray
on than me, as always.
Now look I want to talk about some bad news, and then we can
finish on some good news, because, yes, we do need to talk about
the money. Because the reality is that the state of the country's
finances are not good. They're in a shocking, shocking state, and
all of the important data is bad.
Job numbers after the disastrous budget last October are down
160,000+. They're falling at the fastest rate since COVID. Travel
spend is down. Construction spend is down. Growth across the
board is down. And the wrong numbers are going up. Yes, inflation
is going up. We've got the borrowing costs are going up. The
amount of borrowing is going up. All of these numbers are heading
rapidly in the wrong direction, and just this week, we hit a 30
year high in the cost of the government borrowing money for 30
years, it peaked at about 5.75%.
I know I'm a bit anoraki about this stuff, but it matters. And
basically, the bond markets are applying what they eloquently
call the moron premium to our Rachel from complaints, or was it a
counselee? I'm not quite sure. But the point is, the bond markets
do not trust this government at all. They know that they cannot
control public spending that is completely and utterly out of
control.
And the chances of getting of us getting through the lifetime of
this Parliament without some form of financial drama is remote
and I've been speaking to a lot of people very close to the
market, and it's a bit tense. It's a bit difficult to say the
least.
That's the bad news. The good news, folks, is that actually a
Reform government will be a strong government under the
brilliant, courageous leadership of and a Reform Chancellor, will
be a strong chancellor who can get our economy motoring again.
You won't see a Reform Chancellor crying on the front benches.
And the reality is that we know what is needed to get the economy
motoring. We've got to cut the vast amount of wasteful government
spending. We've got to get rid of the vast, incredible amount of
daft, useless regulations, many of them from our friends, our old
friends, the EU.
And if we achieve those things, then we can, then we can afford
what I call performance related tax cuts that gives the direction
of travel, of how we can motivate and enthuse and inspire. And
the remarkable thing, folks, is that we're already having an
incredible influence, apart from the fact that we exceeded
everybody's expectations in the May elections, controlling 10
councils, the biggest party in another three over 800
councillors. No one thought that was possible. But on some of the
biggest issues of the day, we're leading the way.
[...]
And slowly but surely, that light will get closer and closer, and
let me tell you what that light is. It is the light of Reform. It
is the hope of Reform. It is the aspiration of Reform. It is the
confidence and the belief of Reform. Do you fancy a bit of that?
Do you think the country wants a bit of that?
Do you think that's the reason we're leading in the polls?
Do you want to save our United Kingdom?
Do you want to make the United Kingdom great again?
And let's just check here… would you like to see as our next prime minister?
Then welcome him to the stage. Thank you.
