Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage speaks during Britain's Reform UK party's national conference in Birmingham, Britain, September 20, 2024. REUTERS/Hollie Adams/File Photo
BIRMINGHAM, England (Reuters) - Reform UK leader and Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage took aim at Britain's governing Labour Party on Friday, telling supporters his right-wing party was gaining voters disaffected with the government and would win the next election.
The 60-year-old self-described troublemaker hopes his party will be able to unseat Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government at the next election due in 2029 after it sapped support from the once dominant Conservatives in a vote earlier this year.
"The silent majority is already with us on the key issues that we care about ... We can win the next general election just with the numbers of people that agree with our principles."
With right-wing parties making in-roads across Europe, Reform, which won 4.1 million votes or 14% of the total and five seats in parliament in the July election, is on the march, growing from about 40,000 in early June to over 80,000 members. Labour has more than 350,000.
At a packed conference in the central English city of Birmingham, Farage was mobbed as he entered the hall, welcomed by a crowd of around 4,000 mostly elderly and white supporters who took to their feet to clap and chant "Nigel" repeatedly.
"One in four of those that voted Labour in the general election on July 4 ... said ... they are inclined to vote for Reform UK already," Farage told a cheering crowd after walking onto a firework-lit stage.
LABOUR GOVERNMENT CRITICISED
To boos from an animated crowd, Farage and other Reform lawmakers and supporters listed what they said were government failures, from limiting pensioners' fuel payments to releasing prisoners early and pay deals with trade unions, whom they described as Labour's paymasters.
Labour says it has been forced to make difficult decisions because of what it calls the prior Conservative government's dire legacy, blaming it for leaving a 22 billion pound black hole in public finances and prisons fit to burst.
It says it has struck a number of wage deals in sectors including health and transport to bring an end to industrial action that was hampering growth.
Loved or loathed after being instrumental in winning the 2016 Brexit referendum to get Britain out of the European Union, Farage is no stranger to defying predictions, but he admitted there was still some way to go to professionalise his party.
Founded as the Brexit Party in 2018 only to be rebranded as Reform three years later, it is run as a private company with Farage as the largest shareholder. He said this was now changing so it would be owned by its members and run as a not-for-profit organisation with a new constitution.
With that, party officials hope to get more campaigners on the ground before local elections next year to create a mass movement that will challenge mainstream parties.
Immigration is Reform's chief concern and main campaign issue, accusing both the former Conservative government and Starmer of having no plan to deal with boats bringing asylum seekers to Britain. Reform says it will stop such boats in the English Channel and turn them back to France.
Such views including wanting citizens to adhere only to British culture, customs and tradition have drawn allegations of racism, which the party denies.
"We haven't got room for a few extremists to wreck the work of a party that now has 80,000 members and rising by hundreds every single day," Farage said. "We represent the silent, decent majority of this great country that we live in."
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
