Nigel Farage accused Keir Starmer of repeatedly lying to the nation over migration and warned the PM “I’ll get rid of you”. In an exclusive interview with our brand new weekday show, The Daily Expresso, the Reform leader said Labour’s refusal to invite him to the upcoming state banquet for Donald Trump was “insulting”. And he told how the Prime Minister is still refusing to allow him to appoint peers to the House of Lords. Mr Farage has been left off the guest list for the white tie dinner with the US President hosted by the King despite being a longtime friend.
He said: “They wouldn’t invite me. Hey, we're only 15 points ahead of the polls.
“I've only known him personally as a friend for over a decade, but that shows you the attitude of this Labour government.
“They're insulting. They talk down to me. They don't invite me to that. I wrote to him about members of the House of Lords. I haven't even had a reply. And I'd remind Keir Starmer, I got rid of David Cameron, I got rid of Mrs May, if you go on being rude to me I’ll get rid of you.”
Mr Farage has vowed to deport 600,000 illegal immigrants during his first term if he becomes PM, with five removal flights departing daily.
He insists the UK must leave the European Convention on Human Rights, repeal the Human Rights Act and ignore key refugee treaties.
Sir Keir responded to the plans with a warning to migrants wanting to cross the Channel “that if you're thinking about coming to the UK illegally, don't - you'll face detention and return”.
Reacting, Mr Farage said: “What from Reform, yes. Not from him. What are you having a laugh?
“If you come to the UK illegally under Keir Starmer we guarantee four star, we can't promise five star.
“Come on, come on. What have they done? Nothing, nothing apart from lie to us.
“I'm sorry, but … he just repeatedly lies to us over and over and over. It's almost unbelievable whether he actually himself believes in what he says. I don't know.”
Mr Farage sympathised with Sir Keir for holding the “very tough job” of prime minister where “you're responsible for the sins of everybody else”.
He added: “I sympathise to that level. But I did think before the recess, there was a look about him in the eyes.
“He kind of looked beaten. He looked really down, maybe he comes back refreshed, I don't know, but it looked to me like he really wasn't enjoying it in any way at all.”
Mr Farage also turned his fire on Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch.
“It will all be over by Christmas. She’ll be gone,” he said.
“I would put Kemi out by Christmas at 50/50. She may stay until May. I think in May they will be wiped out in Scotland, pretty much wiped out in Wales, and almost cease to be a national party. This is historic. What's going on here is historic.
“This is a bit like the early 1920s eradication of the Liberal Party. You know, they'd won three general elections, consecutive elections before World War One, and they were gone, replaced by Labour, never to come back.”
Mr Farage said the Conservatives have “no credibility” on tackling illegal migration.
He said: “Look, they put in place plans like Rwanda, which could never be actioned because of our membership of the ECHR, which they refused to address.
“So they pass illegal migration acts. But if they're not enforceable, what's the point of it? “They have failed on this utterly.”
Mr Farage was speaking to the Daily Expresso, a new weekday show launching on Tuesday at 5pm on YouTube, Apple and Spotify.
It is hosted by Express Assistant Editor JJ Anisiobi with regular co-hosts, including our columnists Carole Malone and Esther McVey, along with Belinda de Lucy, a former Brexit Party MEP.
Looking ahead to his party conference this weekend, Mr Farage told the show it will be about “professionalising” the party further with a focus on raising more funding and bringing in candidates to stand.
Pressed on whether he will announce some big name defectors at the gathering in Birmingham, he replied “well, you have to decide that yourself”.
But he admitted how many Conservatives to let in was a “subject of internal debate”.
“We don't want to be the Tory party 2.0 but equally, if those that come to us from the Conservatives add value, then we want them, if they see us as a potential meal ticket for the future, we don't. That's where I draw the line.”
But he said Labour MPs are so “sanitised” that the list of potential defectors is “very short”.
Mr Farage, who built up Ukip and the Brexit Party to lead the country out of the EU, said Reform will offer the optimism the country needs after “terrible economic and social and cultural decline”.
He said there is a “growing sense that literally everything's broken”.
“It's not working. We're in terrible economic and social and cultural decline. And there is an optimism around this movement, around the fact that I've been very consistent in my beliefs over a long, long period of time and people now think you know what? Now's the time for it. “So if you go to a Reform event, it's more like a festival than a political meeting, because there's such optimism.
“Our people really believe we can turn things around, so obviously, things can go wrong. They often do in life, but I think we've got every chance of winning the next election. Yes, I do.”
He vowed to “change the mood of the nation”, insisting: ”We need some positive energy.”
Mr Farage is jetting off to the United States on Tuesday for a whistle-stop visit to Washington where he will give evidence to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday about the impact that UK online safety laws are having on free speech.
He will raise the case of Lucy Connolly, the 42-year-old mother who was jailed for stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers online after the Southport murders last year.
The Reform leader said she had made an “intemperate comment”.
“I'm not defending it, but when you take it in the sort of context that she's lost a child herself, three beautiful young girls were murdered, the country was bloody angry, the government were refusing to give us any information about who the attacker was, despite voices like mine saying, come on, level with us, stop this vacuum, a 31 month prison sentence for that. I mean, sexual assault gets less. It’s pretty extraordinary.”
He said that since then there has been the introduction of the Online Safety Act to stop youngsters accessing violent, dangerous material but it has instead turned into “a tool of censorship”.
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