Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is paying for motorists to buy cut-rate fuel for one day to give a taste of what pump prices would look like if he were Prime Minister, stating he would slash green levies and subsidies.
Reform UK’s Rob Jenrick updated the totem prices at a fuel station in Derbyshire in England’s East Midlands on Tuesday morning, introducing a one-day price cut of 25-pence a litre, or $1.25 a gallon. This would make the forecourt the cheapest in Britain, Reform said, promising under a Farage government that “the war on the motorist would be over”.
Decrying the Labour government and Chancellor Rachel Reeves for using “sneaky” taxes to load extra costs on working people, Brexit pioneer and party leader Nigel Farage said the government is totally out of touch with what his party calls “alarm clock Britain” of small businessmen, entrepreneurs, and working class strivers.
“These taxes are put on by politicians who don’t fill up their own cars, or who ride a bicycle in north London. A total lack of understanding, particularly those who need their cars and vans for work,” Farage said.
Stuart Mitchell, courtesy of Reform UK
While the price of fuel is partially determined by the global oil market, Farage noted that the price at the pump, and for energy to power homes, is sent soaring by taxes, levies, and duties, including purely political green policy. “We’re going to get rid of lunatic green levies”, Farage said, stating that “even the Financial Times” admits cutting harsh levies on the energy industry could see $50 billion of new investment flood into the North Sea, creating new jobs and cutting the price of power in Britain.
Mr Farage said Britain should be as self-sufficient in oil and gas as possible — like the United States is — to insulate itself from global shocks, and said:
…when the government argues it wouldn’t make any difference if we produce our own oil and gas in Britain, oh yes it would! … One thing I will promise you, and the whole of Westminster wouldn’t agree with this because frankly they don’t understand it. If we fracked onshore, if we developed the North Sea properly, we would have much cheaper gas than global markets. This is a myth you hear from Labour, Liberal Democrats, and the Conservatives. They don’t understand the commodity markets.
Farage also said:
Oil may be a global market but gas is not. Over the weekend I met with the U.S. administration, particularly in the energy sector, and they were explaining to me that even in America gas prices change… gas is much cheaper in Texas than it is in Florida. Producing our own gas would reduce everybody’s electricity bills significantly.
Reform’s Shadow Chancellor Robert Jenrick added:
Rachel Reeves is delivering a brutal blow to hardworking people. They’re already being hammered by the cost-of-living crisis, and now she’s raising petrol prices at the worst possible moment.
Reform UK stands squarely with alarm clock Britain: the people who get up, fill the tank, drive to work, and keep this country running. We will always stand up for working people and help lower household costs for families.
Between cutting energy prices by kick-starting domestic production to reduce costs for consumers and industrial electricity prices for business, ending the subsidy of foreign-made electric cars to give British firms a better chance at competing, and slashing green taxes, Farage and Jenrick promised a future era of economic recovery.
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