Labour has begun an all-out assault on Nigel Farage over his views on the NHS in the run-up to key elections in May, as the Reform UK leader prepared to host what is billed as his party’s biggest ever rally in Birmingham.
In a coordinated campaign before Farage spoke at a 10,000-person event in the city on Friday evening, Labour paid for nearly a dozen billboard posters around the city with messages about his talk about replacing the NHS with an insurance-based healthcare system.
That morning, the city’s Birmingham Mail newspaper was covered in a paid-for wraparound Labour advertisement carrying a quote from Farage on the same subject.
Both the lavish Reform event and the Labour response are a sign of the increased stakes as the two parties prepare to battle it out in local elections on 1 May, as well as the Runcorn and Helsby byelection, the latter prompted by the resignation of Labour MP Mike Amesbury and expected on the same day.
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“We’re now very much in campaign mode after the spring statement,” a Labour source said. “Farage is a gifted political orator but soundbites will only carry you so far. It’s time for some scrutiny over what he believes and would do. Expect more of this.”
The chosen territory for now is the NHS, with Labour seeking to draw attention to Farage’s previous hints that he would prefer a different model. Quizzed about this on Friday morning, Farage told the BBC that he supported it being free at point of use, but that he would like to “re-examine the whole funding model”.
While Farage says his preferred idea would be more like the top-up system seen in parts of continental Europe, Labour argues that he would in fact oversee a US free-for-all.
Before the rally, the party pointed to Farage’s links to a US thinktank called the Heartland Institute, which strongly argues for the American healthcare system and has criticised the NHS.
Speaking at a Heartland Institute dinner in Chicago in September last year, Farage praised its work and called for its ideas to spread to the UK. “Maybe the time has come for a bit of reverse colonialism, maybe it’s time that Heartland came and set up in Britain and Europe and brought some of the wisdom that you’ve brought to the American debate,” he told the audience.
Friday’s rally at Birmingham’s Utilita Arena was a chance for him to galvanise his supporters before a major election effort – and to try to move on from bitters rows of the past few weeks.
Rupert Lowe, elected as one of Reform’s five MPs in July, is in open war with Farage after he lost the party whip over allegations linked to bullying staff and threats to Reform’s chair, which Lowe has dismissed as a smear.
In his speech to the rally, Farage called for a “British form of Doge”, modelled on Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”. He also called for a complete ban on civil servants working from home.
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Farage, who has faced criticism for his complete control over the party, also told the crowd that he had given up his two-third share of its shares in favour of members. After the local elections, he said, members would be able to vote for a party board.
The event, which ran very late and appeared less full than the claimed 10,000 ticket sales, also saw Arron Banks, the former aide and donor to Farage in Ukip, as the Reform candidate for the west of England mayoralty.
In Runcorn, although Amesbury had a near-15,000 majority, Reform have been heavily tipped to take the seat after the MP was convicted of punching a man in the street and stepped down, and a Labour win would be a reverse for Farage.
Similarly, winning the near-25% of the vote they have polled at recently would give Reform 400-plus council seats on 1 May but recent council byelections – however limited a guide – have not gone hugely well for the party.
At a council byelection in Maldon in Essex on Thursday Reform took just 16.7% of the vote, and the Conservatives held the seat. Of four recent byelections in the county, billed as a Reform stronghold, the party won a lower vote share than Ukip did in 2013-14.
