In his New Year’s Eve message to the nation, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has cast 2026 as critical to the populist movement’s prospects of dethroning the political establishment and saving Britain.
Speaking from Greenwich, Mr Farage lamented the disastrous state of the country in 2025, from the economic stagnation, inflation, soaring debt, rising social degeneracy and crime, to the increasingly authoritarian speech restrictions on average Britons.
The Reform boss pointed to the case of far-left Egyptian revolutionary Alaa Abd El-Fattah as an example of the rot within the Westminster establishment.
“Here’s a guy that’s come out of Egypt, come back to Britain, who’s put out the most abominable, hateful tweets about killing Jews, killing white people, fighting the police. And this man was given citizenship by the Conservative Party and welcomed back into Britain by the Labour Party. Frankly, there is little to choose between the two,” Farage said.
The Brexit leader also accused the two establishment parties of failing to understand how to manage a 21st-century economy, particularly over emerging industries such as AI and cryptocurrency, with both Labour and the Conservatives embarking on “fanatical” green agenda policies which have prevented the UK from developing the domestic energy base required to fuel the technological growth of the future.
“One in seven of you own a digital asset of some kind. Yet the government, the authorities, simply don’t seem to care. And that’s the point. We need change in this country, real change. And if we go on voting for the same old parties, I promise you nothing will change,” he said.
While Mr Farage lamented the fact that the left-wing Labour Party government has been enabling local councils to delay elections — in a not so veiled attempt to quash Reform’s momentum — he noted that 2026 will regardless see the most amount of local elections held before the next general election.
“They will be the single most important set of elections between now and the next general election. I’ll make this prediction: If Reform win those elections, if we come top, it will put us way ahead of the other parties. Already, we’ve led for 175 opinion polls in a row. Our average lead is 10 per cent. If we get this right on May the 7th this year, we will go on and win that general election,” he predicted.
“We will then absolutely have a chance of genuinely, fundamentally changing the whole system of government in Britain. We may well be the last chance this country has to actually restore some proper values. Those are family, community, country, the ones upon which I based this policy when I founded it in the very beginning.”
Since coming out of electoral retirement weeks ahead of last year’s general election and winning a seat in the House of Commons for the first time in his decades-long political career, Mr Farage has seen his party soar to the top of the polls, all of which Reform has led since the start of the year. Multiple MRP (Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification) polls — which estimate seat-by-seat performance in a potential election — have predicted that Farage’s upstart party will win the next general election and become the party of government.
“But we cannot do this without you. And you will not get the change you want without us,” he said. “So let me ask you one thing. Please make it your New Year’s resolution to do something. Support Reform. Join Reform. Go out and spread the message that we are the party of hope. We are the party of change. And we are genuinely the last chance for Britain.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on X: Follow @KurtZindulka or e-mail to: [email protected]
Read the full article here