Reform UK party leader Richard Tice warned that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “con-socialists” are leading the UK economy on the “road to ruin” by persuing a left-wing agenda in the wake of the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart London during Reform UK’s first party conference in Manchester on Monday, Mr Tice said that the high-tax, high-regulation and “net stupid” policies of Prime Minister Boris Johnson were not what he had hoped for Brexit Britain.
“I think without COVID, [the Conservatives] would not be where they are now, but what they failed to understand is how government balance sheets work,” Tice said.
“They have spent way too much money. We have had a catastrophic COVID, even by the world standards, but this notion that you suddenly have to repay all this debt quickly is just wrong. It is a fundamental misunderstanding about how a government should run its balance sheet.”
Mr Tice said that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to hike taxes on the middle class to pay for shortfalls within the National Health Service (NHS) will lead to economic “ruin”.
He said that the country can expect “lower growth and you will have families struggling to pay bills at a much greater degree, with much lower wages, it’s not going to be easy.”
“The evidence is clear, if you cut taxes and you put money into the pockets of the lowest paid and the least well off and small businesses, you get the greatest amount of growth as the money works its way through the economy, it’s basic economics.
“If you increase taxes and lower growth, over the medium term its the road to ruin.”
The Reform UK leader branded Boris Johnson’s Tory Party as the “con-cocialists”, saying: “If you want high taxes and high regulation, history shows that you always vote for a socialist. Now we have higher taxes and higher regulations, so they are no longer conservative, they must be con-cocialists and therefore Labour is struggling because they don’t know where to go.”
The Reform UK party conference, which was the first since the party was rebranded from the Brexit Party and the first since Nigel Farage stepped down as leader, was held in Manchester opposite the Conservative Party Conference down the road.
Sharing his support on social media, Mr Farage wrote: “Wishing Richard Tice and Reform UK well at their first conference today. Their voice is much needed.”
The party announced that they expect to field 600 candidates for the next general election, with 300 already having been selected. Deputy leader Dr David Bull said that the party’s decision to stand down and make an election pact with Boris Johnson in the 2019 elections “delivered Brexit” but said that Reform will never again stand down in favour of the Tories, or any other party.
“Voters have only lent their vote to the Conservatives, in the future they will be voting for Reform UK,” Dr Bull said.
“Brexit was the beginning, the first ever reform, but there is a lot more to do. We have to reform the NHS, education, our systems of political government, and the dreadful House of Lords,” he added.
A key pillar of Reform’s platform agenda will be to lower taxes, announcing a plan to increase the threshold for income tax, raising the bar at which an individual would begin paying income taxes from £12,500 to £20,000. The tax agenda would also see many small businesses in Britain become exempt from paying corporation tax.
Reform also announced a plan to end waiting lists for patients in the UK’s socialised healthcare system, arguing that the government should back a voucher programme for those on waiting lists to go to private healthcare facilities, where appropriate, rather than waiting for months under the NHS.
Mr Tice told Breitbart London that while he recognises Reform UK has an uphill battle under the country’s first past the post voting system, but he said “the opportunity is there” for a challenge to the Tories from the right.
“We are now starting to get noticed, people realise that we have some interesting common sense policies to the challenges the country faces. They are different policies, rooted in my business experience, my understanding of the economics, understanding of getting things done.
“I just tell it as it is, there is no sort of woke waffle, there’s no promises of things which we can’t do.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter at @KurtZindulka
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