Farage: the Conservative brand is "bust and broken" Nigel Farage launches a personal attack on the people vying to be the next Conservative leader although he does not name any of them directly. He makes a joke based on James Clevery’s name and how Farage perceives his IQ. He laughs about Kemi Badenoch claiming that working at McDonald’s for a week made her working class. He suggests that Tom Tugendhat has been campaigning as a Liberal Democrat, and says that Robert Jenrick is saying things that people in the hall would agree with but has no conviction and would lead a divided party anyway. He says “I don’t give a damn” who becomes Tory leader. Summary of the day … Keir Starmer and top Labour colleagues are to stop taking clothes gifts from donors after days of controversy Nigel Farage said the Conservative brand is “bust” during a speech at the Reform UK conference where he also said the first few weeks of Starmer’s government have been ‘truly shocking’ The Reform UK leader also said the party did not welcome “bigots” as other speeches during the day targeted immigrants, drag queens and vegans In his speech at the event, Richard Tice, deputy chair of Reform UK, which is run by Farage as a private company, criticised people for falling for cults. Multi-millionaire Rupert Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth, gave an ugly speech which punched down on minorities and leaned into antisemitic conspiracy theory tropes Conservative leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick wrote for the Daily Mail a piece which the paper said argued “mass immigration and woke culture have put England’s national identity at risk. Jonathan Portes, professor of economics at King’s College London described it as “unashamed ethnonationalism/racism from Jenrick” A report by Labour Together warned that Labour must focus on the NHS and cost of living to keep former Tory voters who backed Starmer’s party in July onside Thousands of jobs could be at risk and dozens of government construction projects paused as ISG, one of the UK’s largest contractors, filed for administration Price comparison websites and energy brokers will be regulated in a bid to end their alleged “license to scam”, the energy consumers minister Miatta Fahnbulleh has said Members of the largest trade union in the NHS in Scotland have voted in favour of a 5.5% pay rise offered by the Scottish government Scotland’s first minister John Swinney met today with the newly appointed chair of Great British Energy Jürgen Maier Polling by Savanta has found that half of the UK public say that it will be unacceptable for Labour to continue blaming the Conservatives after a year in government, while Ipsos say their latest survey shows half of Britons are disappointed with what Labour have done in government so far My colleagues Peter Walker and Ben Quinn have filed this report from the Reform UK conference today … Keir Starmer and top Labour colleagues to stop taking clothes gifts from donors Pippa Crerar and Rowena Mason report for the Guardian Keir Starmer and his top team will no longer accept free gifts of clothes from Labour donors, as it emerged that Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner also received donations for work outfits. After the row over the Labour peer Waheed Alli funding Starmer’s work wardrobe, the prime minister is understood to have decided he will not take donations to pay for clothes in future. Alli had given him £2,435 worth of glasses and £16,200 worth of work clothing, as well as a stay in a £18m penthouse luxury apartment. Starmer may have broken parliamentary rules in failing to declare clothes bought for his wife by Lord Alli within 28 days of receiving them. The Guardian can also reveal that Rayner, the deputy prime minister, was given a donation for work clothing from Alli in June. This was declared a donation in kind from the peer worth £3,550, without saying it was for outfits. She is understood to have contacted the registrar of interests to give a fuller description of the donation. Reeves has accepted a donation of £7,500 from a donor, Juliet Rosenfeld, since the beginning of last year, which was used to pay for clothing, but it did not amount to a donation in kind. It is understand that Rayner and Reeves have also decided not to take any future donations of this kind for clothing. Farage: first few weeks of Starmer government have been "truly shocking" Speaking at the Reform UK conference today, Nigel Farage started his speech with a visual gag about the prime minister accepting glasses as a gift, and went on to describe the first weeks of Keir Starmer being in Downing Street as “truly shocking”. The Clacton MP said: As for Labour, I mean, goodness me. Have you ever known a new prime minister get off to a worse start than Keir Starmer? It’s truly shocking. I mean, the message of “things can only get worse” is hardly inspiring, is it? Farage went on to claim “We’re living in a state with two-tier policing. We’re living in a state with two-tier justice” and said that people had “had enough already” of Starmer’s leadership of the country. Starmer, Rayner, Reeves will no longer accept donations for clothes – reports Some breaking news at the moment that Labour have announced Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves will not accept any further donations for clothing. More details soon … As somebody who has covered a lot of US politics as well as UK politics it is interesting the extent to which Reform UK adopt Trump-esque talking points that they hope will resonate here. There has clearly been a bloc of voters in the UK – chiefly in England it must be said – who regardless of whether Nigel Farage’s vehicle is branded Ukip, the Brexit party or Reform UK, will vote for a party that positions itself as “anti-establishment” and claims to be suspicious of or against international treaties, courts and supra-national organisations. Whether doubling-down on attacks on immigrants, the LGBT community and citing antisemitic conspiracy tropes while trying to drag more people to vote for them is going to work as a strategy in the UK remains to be seen. Nigel Farage says Reform UK does not care about people’s skin colour or sexual orientation, they believe in meritocracy. Earlier Rupert Lowe MP said it was nice to speak at an event with “a paucity of rainbow lanyards”. Having watched a lot of political speeches over the years it ended on a quite an odd note there about his debanking and complaining about DEI, but Farage is speaking again tomorrow to close the event, which is presumably when he will finish with more of an exhortation for people to volunteer as candidates and become councillors. Nigel Farage is now complaining about Alison Rose getting another job after he raised his debanking campaign and she resigned. He says her new job is in diversity and inclusion. These are very US Republican talking points. Farage: the Conservative brand is "bust and broken" Nigel Farage launches a personal attack on the people vying to be the next Conservative leader although he does not name any of them directly. He makes a joke based on James Clevery’s name and how Farage perceives his IQ. He laughs about Kemi Badenoch claiming that working at McDonald’s for a week made her working class. He suggests that Tom Tugendhat has been campaigning as a Liberal Democrat, and says that Robert Jenrick is saying things that people in the hall would agree with but has no conviction and would lead a divided party anyway. He says “I don’t give a damn” who becomes Tory leader. Nigel Farage describes the audience as “4,000 good folk” which appears to confirm that the attendance is in line with what Reform UK was briefing. Ticket prices ranged from £20 to over £1,000 to be at the event. Farage says the party is aiming to field 2,000 candidates in county elections next year. Party conferences sometimes focus a little bit on the nuts and bolts, and Nigel Farage has spent a long time here talking about shareholder structures. He boasts that in two months Reform UK has set up more than 250 new constituency associations. He says they don’t want “bigots” in the party. Speeches today at the NEC have repeatedly punched down on minorities and cited antisemitic conspiracy tropes. Nigel Farage asks the audience to give Richard Tice a round of applause while slightly negging him by saying he had kept Reform UK going along, but it was not being big enough or rich enough or organised enough when the general election came. Farage says his job is to professionalise and democratise Reform UK. Up to this point, Nigel Farage has run Reform UK as a private company. Nigel Farage’s speech at the Reform UK conference starts all about him and his decision to return to frontline politics. He says since 2019 and the Boris Johnson-era that there had been a “complete breach of trust with the British public on a truly historic scale”. He said he was upset about the damage it did for democracy and says with some grievance that he had stood the Brexit party down in 2019 against Johnson.