REFORM UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice has said that Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Budget was the “third car crash” she has presided over.
He told the Camilla Tominey Show on GB News: “What it was was a car crash, and the third car crash this Chancellor has presided over, the first one being the Budget in 2024, the second car crash being the run up to this Budget when people literally stopped spending, stopped investing, stopped hiring people, and then the Budget itself was a car crash.
“The Chancellor has shown herself, frankly, to be an untrustworthy learner driver.”
“Basically, confidence is absolutely shattered in her competence, in the numbers, in the huge increase in borrowing forecasts by the OBR in just six months. I mean, £21 billion more is forecast to be borrowed in this financial year alone.
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“That’s over £600 per household extra debt, so confidence has shattered, and frankly, we need a new Chancellor in order to restore confidence in our economy.”
“They were clearly making political decisions to prop up the hard left on their deeply socialist party and to increase welfare spending hugely by an extra £16 billion a year by the end of this sort of financial forecast five-year period.
“I mean, just to put that in context, that’s over £600 per working household, extra money that working families would have to spend on welfare for those people who are not setting their alarm clock at five or six in the morning and going to work.”
Asked about allegations that Reform UK benefits from funding from Russia, he said: “Of course not. We’ve got nothing to hide.
“What we’ve called for – let’s have an investigation into all overseas interference into politics. And do you know where that starts? It starts with China and their relationship with the Labour Party, with the Lib Dems.
“We’ve called for a full inquiry into all overseas interference. And I tell you what, the reason Labour won’t do it as the government of the day is because it will expose their close links to the Chinese regime, whether it’s whether it’s giving away the Chagos arguments, whether it’s the collapse of the spy case, whether it’s a senior MP receiving hundreds of thousands.”
On why the party would not hold an inquiry, Tice said: “No one would trust an inquiry. Have a national inquiry into all overseas interference. The reason the government won’t do that is because of their links to China and, of course, the collapse of the spy case. And now we’ve got the mega embassy that’s about to be approved, we think next month.”
Asked about allegations that Nigel Farage had been anti-Semitic as a schoolboy, he said: “Why weren’t they made 5 years ago or 10 years ago? I’ll tell you why. Because they’re made up. Absolutely made up…
“The reality is that these allegations are made up by people with a serious political bias who don’t want Nigel to be Prime Minister.”