Deputy Reform UK leader Richard Tice delivered a wide-ranging and impassioned address at the party’s conference this week, warning of Britain’s deteriorating economic outlook under the current government while setting out Reform’s alternative vision for growth and fiscal discipline.
Opening his speech to delegates, Tice praised the energy and optimism of party members, describing the two-day event as “incredible” and paying tribute to chairman David Bull and the party’s organising team for their efforts.
Turning quickly to what he called the “bad news,” Tice painted a bleak picture of the nation’s finances. He highlighted falling job numbers since last autumn’s budget, declining construction and travel spending, and rising inflation and borrowing costs. Britain’s long-term borrowing costs, he noted, had reached a 30-year high of 5.75%.
“The bond markets do not trust this government at all,” Tice said, accusing ministers of allowing spending to spiral “completely and utterly out of control.” He warned that a financial crisis before the end of the current Parliament was “remote” to avoid.
However, Tice sought to balance his warning with optimism about what a Reform UK government could achieve under Nigel Farage’s leadership. He pledged that a Reform chancellor would cut wasteful spending, slash unnecessary regulation, and introduce what he called “performance-related tax cuts” to incentivise growth.
He pointed to Reform’s electoral progress in May’s local elections, where the party gained control of 10 councils and became the largest party in three others, as proof of momentum. “No one thought that was possible,” he told the conference.
Tice also highlighted the party’s policy interventions on issues such as the Bank of England’s interest payments to commercial banks and the costs of net zero targets. He criticised renewable energy subsidy schemes and vowed to block large-scale solar projects on farmland, describing them as a “con” that misled the public about long-term costs.
The Reform UK deputy leader accused the government of “ideological stupidity” over plans that could affect jobs at the Lindsey Oil Refinery in Lincolnshire, and claimed credit for efforts to save British Steel in the past.
Tice also promised to target local government inefficiencies, claiming billions could be saved from mismanaged pension schemes and council property portfolios. In one of several lighter moments, he joked about using weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic as metaphors for slimming down the civil service and “bloated welfare state.”
The speech ended on an upbeat note, with Tice citing growing membership, now reportedly over 241,000, and support from professionals and business leaders. He urged supporters to remain optimistic despite what he called “a damp, dark, gloomy, long tunnel of deep socialism,” promising that Reform UK represented “the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Tice concluded by rallying the audience behind Nigel Farage, asking whether delegates wanted to see the Reform UK leader as the country’s next prime minister, before inviting him onto the stage to loud applause.
READ RICHARD TICE’S SPEECH IN FULL:
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, David Bull, 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 Nigel Farage 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.
So on the issue that the Bank of England is voluntarily paying interest unnecessarily to the rich city banks, I raised it, they scratched their head, what the hell’s Tice is talking about. Then they looked into it and said good lord, he’s right.
I wrote a three page letter to the governor of the Bank of England. He wrote back. If you haven’t seen it, it’s on their website, and I have got a meeting with the governor later this month. They are taking us very, very seriously on that issue.
You know what’s extraordinary? You can have a scrutiny committee and a council monitoring five grand of expenditure, but you can have a monetary policy committee and a governor of Bank of England making decisions about 100 plus billion pounds with no scrutiny from Parliament of any sensible, meaningful kind. It’s absolute insanity, complete insanity. So we’re having an influence there. And then the second area where we’re having an influence and where, once again, we got the numbers right, is on our good old friend, net stupid zero. And it’s important to remember three word slogans matter, and it’s lovely to see steam oozing out of the ears of red Ed Miliband when I gently raise it with him politely in the House of Commons.
The penny is dropping with people. Contrary to what they said, the bills are going up. They’re not going down. The jobs are being destroyed. They’re not being created. Industries are being destroyed in front of our very eyes, and it is absolutely disgraceful.
Just in Lincolnshire alone, Andrea and I, she’s doing a brilliant job as mayor, by the way, as is Luke Andrea and I have been working incredibly hard to try and save 1000s of jobs based around the Lindsay Oil Refinery, which this government and its ideological stupidity seems to want to close. We’ve actually introduced potential bidders to this process. That’s how we get stuck in to make things happen and to save jobs in the same way that, frankly, it was because of Nigel and I that British Steel was saved. So we are having a huge influence.
We wrote a letter to all of the potential investors in what they call allocation round seven, rolls off the tongue very nicely, which is all about more renewable offshore wind farms and solar farms and all the likes we said, you’re on notice. We don’t want you signing big, long contracts at ever higher bills. You are on notice that we do not consider your contracts from here on valid. This is a con. We’re being misled. We’re being lied to.
I’m going to borrow an old trick from my good friend Lee, who’s a brilliant chief whip. Do we want these big subsidy contracts anymore? Let’s just rip it up. Oh, by the way, given that we’re a bit short of cash and that this government think it’s a good idea to waste cash giving away our valuable strategic Chagos Islands, maybe we should keep those too. Anyone fancy ripping up that deal?It’s done.
We’re not going to tolerate this waste of our cash and this loss of our strategic assets. It’s absolutely vital. So we’re having a huge influence. I’ve written to over 100 potential investors in solar farms. Fine put solar panels on the rooves of homes and industrial units. Lincolnshire does not want 100 square miles of solar panels, least of all from China covering our agricultural farmland.
We don’t want the battery storage either. We’ve got serious questions about them, and something significant has happened this week, ladies and gentlemen, as we write these letters to these shareholders and investors, saying, don’t do it. You’re on notice. This week, I believe a planning application for a solar farm and a battery storage has been rejected on concerns about safety next to a school that is potentially a significant moment.
And that’s the joy of this conference. We’re all learning so much. We’re making such an influence already. They never thought it could be done. They never thought we could be polling in the lead and all this. But actually we are shaping and influencing how investors think, and that’s absolutely vital.
So on the one hand, we could save money with the Bank of England. On the other hand, when I said net zero was costing 30 billion of taxpayers cash, they scratched their head. They said, no, no, Tice, you’re not right there. A year later, the OBR caught up with us, and they did their numbers, and they came up with, guess what, 30 billion.
Even our old friends at the Climate Change committee – they’re not our friends, by the way – they said, give or take, it’s a similar number. So actually, we’re quite good at this stuff, which it turns out, we’re right on the numbers. So when I said last year and before the May elections, with others, that we could save five pounds in 100 on wasteful council and government spending, all the commentators and journos said, Don’t be ridiculous, Tice, you can’t do it. It’s not there.
And we said, we all know it’s there. And sure enough, this Monday, I exposed the scandal of the mismanagement, the overcharging and the underperformance of the local government pension schemes.
And I mean, this is like looking down deep down the back of the sofa, you just dig deeper than anybody else, and you find a pile of cash. My god, there’s like eight to 10 billion quid under the sofa.
Is that useful? Would that help create a brilliant world leading social care system and provision in our councils across the country? Is that what we want? Or would you rather be on the side of the rich city investment managers?
I didn’t think so.
So we are hard at work. This is literally Reform at work, we’re getting stuck in and we’re only three and a half months into these councils. Imagine what we could do in three and a half years. Imagine what happens if people listening and watching say, I’d quite like you to run our council please next May, because then we can do the same.
And so this stuff is really, really significant. And then we’ve got all the property portfolios and assets owned by these councils, and from the early stages of what information I’ve got already, frankly, the mismanagement of those is woeful. So the waste is everywhere. We’re after it.
Now, there’s been a bit of chat recently about this thing this there’s a jab flying around, and a jab that sort of helps reduce the size of our waist. So I thought, well, maybe should we apply a bit of the old Wegovy to slim down the civil service? What about a touch of the old Mounjaro to reduce the size of the quangos? And finally, ladies and gentlemen, last but not least, a bit of the Ozempic to reduce the bloated welfare state? I think this could work.
So there’s masses amount of waste to cut out of the system, and I know that only Reform can achieve that, because we have been round the block. We’ve got incredibly successful people in the party at the moment and joining us as we speak, and therefore we know that actually we can also cut the vast amounts of unnecessary, daft regulations.
Now I want a bit of audience participation here. Hands up. Anyone who likes, GDPR? Anyone? Not a single hand up. Amounts to 4000 people. Quite right. It’s a nightmare. You’re always on your phone – go away cookies – You know what it affects most? Healthcare. I talk to people in healthcare, and it’s a major, major problem that brings me on to the other problem: my friends, aren’t they lovely? My friends, the bats.
I spoke last time about the 100 million pound bat shit bat shed. Well, that was on a national scale with HS2. In my county of Lincolnshire our friends at Natural England, they want another batch shed. They want a bat tunnel to go under a relief road that is due to be built in Lincolnshire. 5 million quid. Is that a good use of 5 million quid?
I don’t think so too so this week, I’ve written to the Chief Executive of Natural England, and I’ve said this is really not a very good idea. I hope you support me on this, so I’m looking forward to the reply, because I don’t think that’s a good use of taxpayer’s cash, and if Natural England thinks that’s a good use of our money at any time, then I think a Reform government needs to have serious words with Natural England. It’s not on
And there’s a whole bunch more. What I know folks, what I know is that this level of influence, shaking things up, disrupting people, challenging people, stopping the rip offs. You see, essentially, we’re now negotiating hard on behalf of the taxpayer, and bluntly, I think there’s nobody better than us to do just that.
And when we achieve this, when we achieve those savings, we cut the regulations. We can tell our friends in the bond markets, we told you, so this is how we can afford to cut the taxes on a sort of performance related basis, with the direction of travel, so that we can get the economy motoring even more. I want two and a half three, three and a half percent, like we used to have in the 80s and 90s. That’s what makes us better off, that gives us the revenues to get the debt to GDP down. That then drives proper growth and prosperity and more money in our public services, we can do this stuff.
And what’s incredibly exciting as I draw towards a close, is that you’ve seen the membership rise to 241,000+ as we speak, the quantity of incredible people coming to us and saying: you are the party to save Britain. You are the party that understands how business can get things growing again. That is who we are. Incredible people, some of the most successful people. I met, a guy this week, a physicist, utterly brilliant, who wants to help just behind the scenes for nothing. This is incredible, folks. I’m so, so proud of what we’re all achieving together. So the good news is that, yes, it’s gloomy at the moment, we have to have optimism. We have to look forward. And what I can tell you is that whilst we may be currently in a damp, dark, gloomy, long tunnel of deep socialism. There is light at the end of the tunnel, folks, it’s there. It’s in front of us.
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 Nigel Farage as our next prime minister?
Then welcome him to the stage. Thank you.
Main Image: Richard Tice by Derek Bennett. This image has an extracted file: Richard Tice (22031179792) (cropped).jpg. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
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