Farage warns Reform is parking its tanks on Labour’s lawn and of Nige-mare on Downing Street as he kickstarts local election campaign

Nigel Farage warned Labour yesterday that Reform was ‘parking our tanks on the Red Wall lawn’ as he fired the starting gun on his party’s local elections campaign.

In a major speech in Durham, the Reform leader insisted Labour had just as much to fear from his insurgent party as the Tories in its traditional working-class heartlands.

He even joked of a ‘Nige-mare on Downing Street’ as he taunted Sir Keir Starmer over the prospect of winning the next general election, with the populist party continuing to ride high in the polls.

But the Tories accused him of ‘cosying up to the far-Left’ in a cynical bid to win more votes after he used the speech to talk of the need for a ‘good partnership’ with militant trade union bosses.

Striking a similar tone to Sir Keir in some of his speeches, Mr Farage added that ‘a pragmatic, sensible relationship’ was ‘vital’ when dealing with hard-Left barons.

Mr Farage added, however, that in the wake of the Birmingham bin strikes, he would take a ‘firm but fair’ approach with the unions if he were negotiating with them.

It comes after Reform led the crusade for nationalising British Steel and after Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader and MP for Skegness, wore a trade union Save Our Steel badge in the Commons chamber during a crunch debate on Saturday.

Asked if Reform may propose nationalising further industries in the future, Mr Farage did not rule it out and said it was the party’s aim to ‘re-industrialise’ Britain.

Nigel Farage launched the Reform partys local election campaign in Durham yesterday

Farage joked of a ‘Nige-mare on Downing Street’ as he taunted Sir Keir Starmer over the prospect of winning the next general election

Speaking on whether he really believed he could turn ‘the Red Wall’ – the label given to Labour heartlands in the Midlands and North – into ‘the Reform Wall’, he said: ‘Yeah, you know what, I think voting has become much more transitory than it’s ever been before. 

And while Labour did win back the heartlands [in last year’s general election], it was a loveless win in many of those seats, actually with fewer votes than they got under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019.’

 The local elections on May 1, when 1,641 seats across 24 councils will be up for grabs, are the first Reform will stand in after winning five parliamentary seats in last year’s election.

Asked what a Reform-run council would look like, Mr Farage said the party would introduce ‘a British equivalent of DOGE in every single council’. 

This was a reference to US President Donald Trump’s bureaucracy-slashing Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Tesla tycoon Elon Musk.

He added: ‘We’ve got to see the long-term contracts that many of these county or unitary authorities have signed up to.

‘We will look at the sums spent on DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives). A massive change of culture, that’s what we’re going to bring to these county councils.’

He also admitted that women have been more ‘cautious’ about voting Reform than men but insisted that new polling shows the split is now ‘50:50’.

Farage said the Reform-run councils would introduce ‘a British equivalent of DOGE in every single council’

The Reform leader also called for a ‘good partnership’ with militant trade union bosses

It came after polling by Survation across Red Wall seats found Reform’s support since the last election has soared from 18 to 30 per cent. 

At the same time, Sir Keir’s net rating in the North and Midlands was -26 per cent, based on 27 per cent approving of him and 53 per cent disapproving.

By contrast, the polling agency had Mr Farage on -4 and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch on -8.

A Tory spokesman said: ‘He’s cosying up to the far-Left and will always side with vested interests, rather than the national interest.’