Nigel Farage's keynote speech to the 2026 Reform UK National Conference

Good afternoon conference. I'm sorry we were delayed. It was a security alert, and I was told, for security reasons, I couldn't take the stage. That's why we had the delay. So I decided instead to come among you and sing and dance, and it worked out pretty well, I think, in the end.

We have another year and another Prime Minister. Can you believe it? The seventh in 10 years. I mean, think about it. We used to laugh at the Italians, not any longer.

But what clearer sign could there be that Britain is broken, that even our politics doesn't work anymore.

So I wonder, what will this new Prime Minister Andy Burnham actually do?

Well, he keeps saying that for 40 years we've been headed in the wrong direction in every way. We need more state control. We need more public ownership. And he sounds like the most radical Prime Minister in decades. And yet, his chancellor, his chancellor John Healey, says this is a continuity government.

I suspect the truth is there'll be very little difference in this government to the one that went before. That is my suggestion.

Although he does have a big solution. It's called Number 10 North, and what does that mean? It means bigger government, more taxes, and of course, more failure.

Now, I stood on this very stage in September 2024, just after our breakthrough in general election, and I said, Starmer's government will not go the full term, I said very clearly that I believed that financial circumstances would force Labour into a spring 2027 election. You know what? I stand by that. I believe there will be an election next spring.

And I believe there must be a general election because Andy Burnham has no mandate. The Messiah without a mandate, we deserve a general election on who continues to govern this country.

So, at this conference, we say enough of all the broken promises. Enough of all the U-turns. We need a government that actually delivers on its promises. A government that restores trust in the entirety of the voting system. A government that is honest with the country and admits that Britain is broken, and Britain needs reform, and we're the only people capable of doing it.

The Tories had 14 years in power and failed absolutely miserably. Andy Burnham says he needs 10 years. At this conference, we tell you that in the first 100 days of government, we will make fundamental changes to the way this country is run. We will keep our pledges. And I will hold those ministers to account. And if, in 100 days, they have not delivered on their promises, I will sack them and replace them with somebody else with the courage to do it.

Now, since we were last here in September. Let's remind ourselves of one or two of the ups and downs of this year.

May the seventh this year was massive. We wiped out the Conservative Party in East Anglia and we smashed the Labour Party in the Midlands. And the North. And let's not forget the huge strides we made in Scotland and Wales.

We campaigned on a slogan: "Vote Reform, Get Starmer out. A promise made and a promise kept.

We have gone on to build the biggest party membership in the country. We now have over two and a half thousand elected councillors. We are in control of over 30 councils, and I was especially pleased the other week when Britain's most famous living detective, Colin Sutton, was elected as our Police and Crime Commissioner in Norfolk.

This time last year, I was the leader of the party. Richard Tice was the deputy. That was the entirety of our front bench. A lot has changed this year. Robert Jenrick now acting as our shadow chancellor, Zia Yusuf acting as our spokesman on home affairs, Suella Braverman, skills, education, universities. Richard Tice, business and energy, who you've just heard from.

And we have in Dan Thomas, the opposition leader in Wales, and in Scotland we have Malcolm Offord leading Scotland.

Malcolm have a go if you're hard enough' Offord.

And in both Wales and Scotland, of course, we have full shadow cabinets.

We've also been joined this year by the 25-year member of Parliament for Romford, Andrew Rosindell, who I think, who I think was Reform before Reform was even founded.

And since last year, Danny Kruger has come in, a man that has worked in Number 10 in government to help us to help us prepare for government.

This time last year, I said on this very stage that our biggest weakness was that we lacked experience. We didn't. We didn't have anybody who'd been there on the front lines.

Now we have frontline experience. Now we have frontline people speaking for us in the UK, Scotland, Wales, England. But we've more to do. There are more big jobs to fill, and I'm looking and working on defence, health, and the other areas. And we will get there. We will get there soon.

But we've also lost somebody very, very important to us, and I thought the tributes-at least I hope and believe-the tributes that were paid to Ann Widdecombe this morning at the start of this conference were correct and appropriate. And we missed you terribly. May God bless your soul.

And we're busy. We're busy restructuring the party. We're busy raising money. We're interviewing general election candidates four days a week. And believe me, when that election comes, we will be ready. And when that election comes, we will fight to win, no question.

But since May 8th, and May 8th was the day the establishment woke up and thought, "Oh dear, oh dear, these people aren't just a flash in the pan. These people are not going to go away, and we have been the subject of a highly coordinated campaign of attacks.

In a sense, it's not really surprising if you think about it. Two parties have dominated British politics for over 100 years, and around them is a whole ecosystem of membership of the House of Lords, the issuance of government contracts, heads of quangos, and so much else.

A whole ecosystem around the century-old two-party system, and we come along and threaten that they were never going to come out with a tray of gin and tonics. I promise you.

But I promise you, we will not be distracted by any of this. We are absolutely determined in what we're doing, and our opponents, our opponents are so conniving that I include both Labour and Conservative in this. They tried to deny the vote to 5 million people on the seventh of May this year, in some cases for the second year in a row, and it was Reform by pushing that legal action that won back the right to vote for 5 million people.

And then statement after statement in the House of Commons from Labour ministers trying to change the rules on donors. Treating successful British businessmen who have gone out round the world and made a huge success of their lives. Actually, calling them in the Commons malign actors'.

Now, talking of money, and this thing is not always easy. You will have noticed today, and by the way, the timing of today is no coincidence, is it? The fact this happened on the first day of a Reform conference is no coincidence. So you'll have noticed we've experienced a little local difficulty today. A foreign-funded group of hard-left activists with a long history. Indeed, a group in the past, strongly criticised by the U.S. Congress for their methods, have for over a year and at huge financial cost targeted figures in Reform.

Make no mistake, this was an exercise, a prolonged exercise in entrapment.

I want to be clear: the party has done nothing wrong. The party has taken no illegal money. The party has taken no money. That's important.

I was asked today about the polling, let me be clear on that too. The polls in question were not commissioned by Reform. The results were out there in the full public domain, and there is no issue.

What is problematic is loose pub talk, including a couple of boasts that were made. That simply wee not true, but some of the comments made by two of our team were injudicious at best.

Neither of these men was authorised to act in this way. Accordingly, they've stepped down pending an investigation.

I repeat, Reform has broken no law. We take compliance extremely seriously.

And ask yourself, why is all of this happening? Anyone got a clue why it's happening? Because they're scared of us. That's why it's happening.

And in my case, I've broken no laws, abused no public money. I haven't even got a motorhome. Believe you me. I'm accused of a non-declaration of a personal gift. A personal gift that might just keep me alive. Might just keep me alive.

But I couldn't wait forever. I couldn't wait for six months or a year for this committee to decide. So I said, "Right. I tell you what, the voters of Clacton. They can be my judge. Let the people of Clacton decide, and they answered with an emphatic win. And I thank them very much indeed.

So today we make the 100-day pledge, and we're taking on a Conservative Party who failed on all of their promises and reasonable expectations. A party who put net zero into law. A party who early released 160,000 prisoners. A party who gave us mass migration on a scale the country has never seen, and a Boriswave. Given that the vast majority that came don't work and will never work, that will cost us hundreds of billions of pounds over the decades to come.

And I would argue it's a disaster for which they simply should not be forgiven.

Now, Kemi Badenoch is very good at denying her own role in all of this, and every day speaks out on issues. Suddenly she's pro defence spending, but she won't tell you that at the end of the Conservative term they were spending less on defence than Gordon Brown was. And I could go on with issue after issue where she says they will do the exact opposite to what they did in government.

My view of the Conservative Party is most of them want power for its own sake, rather than what they can do with it for the good of the country, and I don't trust them.

And we have a Labour government set for more failure. Public spending hopelessly out of control, and let me tell you, they will not stop the boats. And the fact we're on course for 30,000 this year, and not 40,000, is far from being a victory.

And a Labour government that continues the persecution of our ex-servicemen, be they regular army or special forces, to the point where recruitment is at disastrous lows.

A government, despite all the things John Healey had said, who now can't spare a few million for training exercises for the army.

A government under which it took three weeks to send a single Royal Naval vessel to Cyprus.

A government determined, determined to give away the Chagos Islands. I'm sorry, to pay to give away the Chagos Islands. A massive strategic error, which completely ignores the genuine rights of the Chagossian people, who we are going to stand up and fight for. They deserve to go back to their home.

But it's through that weakness, it's through that weakness that you can see the president of Argentina. He now sees a gap and starts to talk about the Falklands. Our national security is not safe under this government.

On top of that, they are leading us to financial ruin. We have Prime Minister stuck in the past with some strange socialist dogma. He told us in the Commons the other day that the triple helix was the solution to our economic problems. Does anybody in this room know what the triple helix is? Good, because nor do I.

Our pledges are clear. We will stop the boats within the first 100 days of government end of.

And today's historic agreement, signed with Jordan Bardella and on behalf of Marine Le Pen, on stage here, really means we can do this. We can succeed. And by the way, wasn't he brilliant earlier on today? Brilliant.

We will, as Richard Tie said to you earlier, cut energy bills by £250 and end the net zero lunacy, deindustrialising and destroying the British economy.

We will - and you'll hear more from Suella tomorrow - we will boost NHS training. It's monstrous. We don't produce enough of our own nurses and doctors, and we rely on importing them from around the rest of the world. It's mad.

And Suella will also talk about student tuition fees, about the fact we are sending far too many young people to university, and you'll hear some quite radical plans from Suella tomorrow.

And from Robert Jenrick tomorrow. His 100-day pledge will not only be to slash benefit spending in a big way, but to cut taxes on working people and pensioners in a radical way.

And you've heard me say before, you know, we are the party of alarm clock, Britain. They are going to love these packages.

But I repeat the point: these aren't vague, empty promises. These are pledges that we must deliver in the first 100 days of government, or those individual ministers will have failed. Indeed, we, as a government, will have failed. We believe in jeopardy. We believe in accountability, and we will do everything, everything within our powers, to make this happen.

So some will say, some will say, and there'll be many sceptics in the room. How can you achieve this, given the obstacles that are in front of you. Well, we will declare a national emergency. All recess of Parliament will be cancelled. Parliament will sit, if necessary, for 24 hours a day. For six days a week until we pass the necessary legislation, and our policies will be explicit in our offering document to the British people.

And I expect the House of Lords to honour that, as they've done with the Salisbury Convention for over a century, but if they don't, well, we'll present them with an idea. It's not a new one; it's been used before.

We'll appoint hundreds of new peers so that we have a majority in the House of Lords.

And if that proves difficult, if that proves difficult, we'll hold a referendum on the current composition of the House of Lords, and they would be swept away by a British public appalled by them.

Now, the other obstacle, of course, could be the judiciary. We don't want the courts striking down, do we, the will of the people. But ultimately, it is Parliament that makes the law, and we'll remove the ability of judges to lean on outdated conventions like the European Convention on Human Rights, which will be gone, gone, gone.

Parliament makes the law; judges interpret the law. We will do whatever it takes, and perhaps have to consider how judicial appointments work in the future.

And the same goes for the civil service. If we are elected with a majority on clear manifesto promises, it is the job of the civil service to make sure we can carry that out on behalf of the people in a democratic country.

But if they try to obstruct us, they will be removed from their posts and replaced by people from outside, from the worlds of business.

This plan is bold, it is ambitious, but it's much needed. Britain is broken, and only Reform has the courage, the conviction, and the foresight to fix it. And I really, truly believe that. I really do.

And I'm tired. I'm tired of being told what can't be done. I'm tired of being told, "Oh, we couldn't do it because of this. We couldn't do it because of that. That is not what the public want. The public want action. The public want genuine change. The public do not want any more of the same. And our attitude is can do, can do, and will do.

Believe me, believe me when I say I mean this. I have never been in politics for rank, for title, or career. There are many other things on this planet that I can go and do, but I'm doing it, and I've been doing it on and off for 35 years, because I've always fought for a sovereign, proud, independent country that undestands what it is, respects its history, is ambitious, energetic, entrepreneurial.

I'm only here because of the failure of our political class, and I am determined to lead Reform to victory at the next general election. That is my job.

Leadership matters, but so do you, because you're all part of this incredible People's Army that we've built up. I'm proud of you, and I hope you're proud of the role you're playing in changing political history, in changing the future of this country. And I thank you for being here today. I thank you for waiting for the long interlude before this speech. I thank you for Sweet Caroline. I thank you for delivering leaflets and putting up posters and doing all that you do. And can I just say thank you. Love you all. You're a great lot. Thank you.