\n<\/p>\n
Farage<\/strong> says small business owners thought that Brexit would cut the regulatory burden they were facing. But that did not happen, he says.<\/p>\n The other great betrayal is that is every one of these millions of businesses, every one of these 5.6 million businesses, believed that, with Brexit, the regulatory burden on their shoulders would become less.<\/p>\n I can tell you, a decade on, almost from the referendum, in every single industry, from financial services to fisheries, the burden of regulation and the threat of the regulator is worse now than it was then.<\/p>\n Share<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Key events<\/p>\n <\/span>Show key events only<\/p>\n Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n At a press conference last week Nigel Farage<\/strong> dodged a question from the Guardian\u2019s Pippa Crerar about whether Reform UK is still committed to proportional representation, as it was at the time of the last election.<\/p>\n Today the Guardian\u2019s Eleni Courea<\/strong> asked Farage again if the party was still in favour of PR. At the election last year Reform would have benefited hugely from PR, but now that has a substantial lead in the poll, it is arguable that it could win big under first past the post, as Labour did in 2024.<\/p>\n Today Farage<\/strong> replied:<\/p>\n On electoral reform I\u2019ve always favoured AV Plus, which would mean significant minority voices would get a vote in the House of Commons.<\/p>\n But the really big electoral reform that I favour \u2013 and it would need to be a high bar \u2013 but I do think the British people have a right, if they feel the political class are out touch with them substantially on a major issue \u2013 I do believe the British people should have the chance \u2013 it\u2019s got to be verified, yes \u2013 but a chance through petition to call a national referendum on a subject of their choosing.<\/p>\n This made it sound as if Farage is less keen now on PR than he was a year ago; he did not disavow the policy, but he did not imply it is guaranteed a slot in the next manifesto either.<\/p>\n And he did imply that he is far more committed to legislating to create a trigger mechanism for referendums. This is a policy particularly associated with Switzerland.<\/p>\n But has Farage thought this one through? If the Guardian gets a question at Farage\u2019s next press conference, perhaps someone might point out that there is an important constitutional issue where a Reform government would be \u201csubstantially\u201d out of step with public opinion. <\/p>\n <\/span>Polling on Brexit from July 2025<\/span> Photograph: YouGov<\/p>\n And parliament does have a petition mechanism. The most popular petition ever attracted six million signatures. It was launched in 2019, and it called for the UK to remain in the EU.<\/p>\n Another very popular petition, attracting almost 2m signatures, called for Donald Trump to be banned from making a state visit to the UK \u2013 another cause Farage would not want to support.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Updated at\u00a008.42 EST<\/p>\n At his press conference Nigel Farage was also asked what other world leaders, apart from Donald Trump, he was speaking to.<\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> said that he knew some leaders, and that he expected to be talking to more of them after the next election cycle in Europe. He said he knew Viktor Orb\u00e1n, the rightwing, populist Hungarian prime minister.<\/p>\n He also said that he had been developing \u201csome relationships in other parts of the world\u201d, which he was not able to disclose at this point.<\/p>\n In his recent interview with Mishal Husain<\/strong> for her Bloomberg podcast, Husain told Farage she had been told by Nick Candy<\/strong>, the Reform treasurer, that Farage was now spending time with \u201cpresidents, prime ministers and kings from the Middle East\u201d.<\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> did not deny this. He just told Husain: \u201cOne of the reasons I\u2019ve survived so long in public life is I\u2019m very discreet and if I have private meetings with people, I never discuss it.\u201d<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: Under your plans for the BBC, would you keep a small licence fee to fund the slimmed down news service you are talking about (see 11.49am), if the rest of it is being funded by subscription?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> said the BBC World Service was funded by the Foreign Office, which he said was \u201cright and proper\u201d.<\/p>\n He said most BBC services should be funded by subscription.<\/p>\n He went on:<\/p>\n Should be a small subvention for news? I just think we\u2019re moving towards a world where we pay for everything.<\/p>\n And if BBC News was good, would people pay a reasonable amount for it, just as they\u2019re paying for other channels, or other new services? I think they probably would.<\/p>\n He said Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary who has defected from the Tories to Reform UK, would help the party develop policy on this.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Back to the Reform UK press conference, and Nigel Farage<\/strong> was asked if he would get rid of the Office for Budget Responsibility. It was put to him that Zia Yusuf<\/strong>, Reform\u2019s head of policy, has described them as \u201ca bunch of morons\u201d.<\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> said he was surprised that Yusuf used language like that; he would expected Yusuf to be much more critical, he joked.<\/p>\n He went on:<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure the OBR served any useful purpose over the course of the last few years. I think we elect governments to make decisions, not to rely on everybody else as an excuse.<\/p>\n The party would look at this issue, he said.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n The Commons culture committee has now published the letter it has received from Samir Shah,<\/strong> the BBC chair, responding to questions about the leaked Michael Prescott memo that led to Davie\u2019s resignation.<\/p>\n The letter runs to four pages, and covers various points, but it includes an apology for the way the Panorama programme about Donald Trump edited extracts from the speech he gave before his supporters attacked the US Capitol.<\/p>\n Shah says the BBC accepts that the edit make it look as if Trump was making \u201ca direct call for violent action\u201d and he says \u201cthe BBC would like to apologise for that error of judgment\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>Extract from Samir Shah’s letter to culture committee<\/span> Photograph: BBC<\/p>\n A congressional inquiry subsequently concluded that Trump was to blame for the attack on the Capitol. It said:<\/p>\n That evidence has led to an overriding and straight-forward conclusion: the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Updated at\u00a007.45 EST<\/p>\n Q: Under your plans, would be BBC stop showing programmes like The Traitors?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> said, under his proposal (see 11.49am), it would not need to. The BBC would compete on the market, and people would pay for the TV programmes they wanted.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: What else did you talk about in your conversation with Trump?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> said they talked about the British political scene. He says he will not talk about some of what was said, but he said Trump said the UK should be drilling for more oil and gas. He said Trump said UK police was \u201cself-destructive\u201d, and he added: \u201cAnd I agree with him 100%.\u201d<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: Will you get an organisation like the Institute for Fiscal Studies to cost your manifesto?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> said Reform UK would have a costed manifesto. But he said he did not think they would trust the IFS to do it.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: Your comments (see 11.32am) could be intrepreted today as an attack on big business. Are you worried that could discourage investment?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> said he was very happy for big business to invest in the UK.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not anti-big business. I\u2019m just anti-big business having such a say over government policy that small business doesn\u2019t get a look in.<\/p>\n And, believe me, small business has not had a look in for years and years and years. It has become the most neglected sector of the British economy.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: What policies have you got for small busineses?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> said today was just the start. They would develop policy over time, he said. But he said he thought the VAT threshold (the turnover at which firms have to register for VAT) was \u201cfar too low\u201d.<\/p>\n When it was put to him that some economists say the threshold should be lower (because at the moment it is at a point where it disincentivises some firms from growing), Farage said the threshold should be \u201csignificantly higher\u201d.<\/p>\n There are so many businesses, there are so many one and two-man bands who find themselves literally on that cusp [for VAT registration]. They\u2019re literally on that cusp. And that\u2019s why the argument for increasing the threshold makes sense.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: Would Reform UK stop ministers taking hospitality from business?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> said there was nothing wrong with accepting a cup of tea. The important thing was to ensure that hospitality was declared, he said.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: Is Reform UK anti-worker?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> said he objected to the idea that businesses were anti-worker.<\/p>\n Let me tell you something. Most people that run family businesses treat their staff as well as they treat their own families.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: Are you concerned about Donald Trump intervening in the debate about the future of the BBC?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> replied:<\/p>\n If I was the president of the United States of America, if I was the person making sure that the United Kingdom had security guarantees that meant that it could be defended, \u2013 whereas on its own it would be helpless \u2013 and I\u2019d been stitched up on the eve of a national election \u2026<\/p>\n People talk about election interference. What the BBC did was election interference.<\/p>\n If you put yourself in Donald Trump\u2019s shoes, I think you\u2019ll understand why, when I had a chat with him on Friday, he made his feelings on the subject known to me in no uncertain terms and not in a quotable form.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: Are you worried about the impact on British culture if the BBC becomes weaker?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> claimed the problem with the BBC was \u201cthey\u2019re not reflecting the country we\u2019re living in\u201d.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: Who do you think should be the new director general of the BBC?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> said the problem with the BBC was that it employed people from a narrow section of society, with a particular worldview.<\/p>\n He said the new DG should be \u201csomeone dynamic, someone from the private sector, but somebody with a history of turning around cultures\u201d.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> is now taking questions.<\/p>\n Q: What do you think needs to change at the BBC?<\/em><\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> says the BBC has been \u201cinstitutionally biased for decades\u201d.<\/p>\n He says he spoke to Donald Trump on Friday.<\/p>\n He just said to me, is this how you treat your best ally?<\/p>\n It\u2019s quite a powerful comment, isn\u2019t it? It\u2019s quite a powerful comment. So there\u2019s been too much going for too long.<\/p>\n Farage says last year half a million people stopped paying the licence fee. He says, if the culture there does not change, millions more people could start doing this<\/p>\n He say he would like to see the BBC \u201cslimmed down\u201d.<\/p>\n When it comes to entertainment, when it comes to sport and many other areas like that, they should compete against everybody else [with] a subscription model. That\u2019s the modern world that we live in.<\/p>\n So the licence fee, as currently is, cannot survive. It is wholly unsustainable.<\/p>\n Farage says he is not saying he does not want the BBC to survive. The BBC World Service is \u201cvery important\u201d, he says. He says it should just focus on doing \u201cstraight news\u201d.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> thanked Lord Bamford from JCB for the \u00a3200,000 that the firm has given to Reform UK.<\/p>\n The firm has also given the same amount to the Tories. At the weekend JCB said:<\/p>\n Both the Conservative party and Reform UK believe in small business and it\u2019s for that reason JCB has donated \u00a3200,000 to each in recent weeks.<\/p>\n In the past Bamford has been exclusively a Conservative supporter.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Farage<\/strong> introduced his first guest, Kevin Byrne,<\/strong> who founded the Checkatrade website.<\/p>\n Byrne claimed the lack of support that small business owners had had from this government, and from the previous government, was \u201cabsolutely staggering\u201d.<\/p>\n He claimed that the US economy was succeeding because it celebrated entrepreneurs. But the situation in the UK for small business was \u201cmadness\u201d, he claimed.<\/p>\n <\/span>Kevin Byrne speaking at Reform UK event<\/span> Photograph: Reform UKShare<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Farage says small business owners who thought Brexit would cut regulation have been betrayed because opposite happened Farage says small business owners thought that Brexit would cut the regulatory burden they were facing. But that did not happen, he says. The other great betrayal is that is every one of these millions of businesses, every<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[837,5615,303,304,3132,132,819,124,1312,98,445],"class_list":{"0":"post-32811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-betrayed","9":"tag-brexit","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-cut","12":"tag-farage","13":"tag-live","14":"tag-owners","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-regulation","17":"tag-small","18":"tag-thought"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Farage says he’s still in favour of PR – but he suggests he would prioritise allowing voters to trigger referendums on policy<\/h2>\n
Farage suggests Reform UK would scrap Office for Budget Responsibility<\/h2>\n
BBC apologises for ‘error of judgment’ in TV edit that implied Trump made ‘direct call’ for violent attack on US Capitol<\/h2>\n
Farage says BBC should have to compete against other broadcasters via subscription model<\/h2>\n
Farage says VAT threshold for businesses ‘far too low’<\/h2>\n
Farage says BBC’s Panorama edit was ‘election interference’, and Trump reacted ‘not in quotable form’<\/h2>\n
Farage says Trump complained to him about BBC in conversation they had on Friday<\/h2>\n
Farage thanks Lord Bamford for JCB’s \u00a3200,000 donation to Reform UK<\/h2>\n