Nigel Farage used his first speech in the House of Commons to launch a furious attack on his fellow MPs.
The Reform Party leader claims he and his party colleagues have found themselves “outnumbered” in the House of Commons on the Brexit issue, claiming the chamber has a majority of pro-EU MPs.
Sitting alongside fellow reformers Lee Anderson, Richard Tice, Rupert Lowe and James McMurdock, he told MEPs: “I spent nearly 21 years as a Member of the European Parliament in Brussels.
“I have to say that this place is very different indeed. It is smaller, there are no chauffeur-driven Mercedes cars for every member, no large sums of money that you don’t have to spend on anything or produce receipts for, and I wonder if that is perhaps why so many members of the British political system love the European Union so much.
Nigel Farage wins Clacton seat
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“It’s a pretty nice place to work. What I perhaps didn’t expect was to come here and find myself with my reformist team more outnumbered than in the European Parliament.
“There are more Brexit supporters in the European Parliament than I think there are in this 2024 Parliament.
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“This is very much a remain parliament, and I suspect that in many cases it is actually a leave parliament.”
Quickly turning his attention to Keir Starmer and his Labour government, Farage laid bare his frustration with the King’s speech delivered last week.
He said Labour’s plans, read out by King Charles in the House of Lords, lacked a coherent strategy for tackling the migrant crisis.
The former UKIP leader told fellow MPs he expected a busy time in the Commons for him and his Reform colleagues as they seek to hold the government to account on the issue.
Nigel Farage sat next to former Reform Party leader Richard Tice
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“The word immigration is mentioned only twice and asylum only once, and that is perhaps not a surprise,” he said.
“When Keir Starmer set out his six main priorities for the general election, he didn’t mention legal or illegal immigration. That’s the area where I think the five of us [Reform MPs] We will find ourselves massively outnumbered in this house.
“We really want to talk about these issues. I believe that the population explosion has more impact on the quality of life of ordinary people than any other issue.
“It all started when the present Home Secretary became an MP in May 1997. It is worth remembering that net migration was the same throughout the 1940s, the whole of the 1950s, the whole of the 1960s, the whole of the 1970s, the whole of the 1980s and the whole of the 1990s up until Mr Blair.
Nigel Farage has slammed Labour and the Conservatives
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“Net migration had hovered between 30,000 and 50,000 people a year for more than half a century, and then Mr Blair decided to throw open the gates like never before, to the delight of big business and giant multinationals who wanted as much cheap labour as possible, and to hell with the consequences for ordinary workers.”
The Conservatives were then the target of Farage’s wrath, who accused them of failing on immigration for 14 years.
Farage has long been an outspoken critic of the issue, demanding radical measures such as leaving the EU, quitting the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) and implementing a net-zero migration policy.
Speaking about the Tory failures, he told MPs: “It was even more surprising that the massive acceleration of our population through immigration was now, through a Conservative Party, accelerating what had happened under Mr Blair.
“We’ve seen a population of almost 10 million people since that landslide victory by Labour.
“Even if we consider the net figure of one migrant per minute, even if we take into account that this debate brings to light several hundred other migrants in our country, no one claims that there are not exceptional people among them, there are.
“But population levels mean we need to build a new house every two minutes. Even if a Labour government manages to deliver the 1.5 million homes it wants to build in the current parliament, it will do nothing to alleviate the current housing shortage.
“Rents increased by 25% in 2021. Why? Population growth and the resulting pressure. The demographic crisis is one of the main factors in the deterioration of the quality of life of residents, and no one here wants to talk about it.”
He spoke after winning the Clacton seat with a resounding 46.2% of the vote.
