CAMPAIGNERS hijacked a giant screen at a Reform UK rally to show pictures of Vladimir Putin and Nigel Farage as delegates arrived.
Campaign group Led By Donkeys hijacked the exterior screen as the party launched its local election campaign at the rally at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday evening.
Reform UK claimed the Birmingham event on Friday evening was “the biggest-ever launch rally in modern British political history”, with 10,000 tickets said to have been sold.
A series of images were shown by Led By Donkey's, including one of Putin and Farage side-by-side which stated: "Vladmir and Nigel welcome you to Birmingham."
Another read: "Entrance to the far-right."
Within the conference, Farage said he wanted to create a British form of Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, a programme aimed at cutting costs in the American federal government led by Elon Musk.
Farage also parroted a UK version of Donald Trump's slogan, with "make Britain great again".
Several attendees were seen leaving wearing caps bearing the message.
A series of colourful sets depicting “broken Britain” provided a backdrop to speeches from senior party figures, including a mock bus stop bearing the slogan “Your council is broken. Reform will fix it”.
There were also posters depicting Sir Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson as clowns, a blue Reform UK bus and a mock town including a betting shop “Labourbrokes” and a barber shop named “Keir’z Kutz” with the slogan “Cutting everything but tax”.
The party also unveiled that a long-time Farage ally, Arron Banks, would be its candidate for the West of England mayoral election.
“We will cut taxes. Nobody that earns less than £20,000 a year should pay any income tax whatsoever,” Farage told the rally, after riding out on to the stage on a JCB.
He added: “We are on the side of the worker, we’re on the side of working people, we want to incentivise those on benefits to get off benefits and go back to work.”
The Reform leader also criticised changes to the non-dom tax, which media reports suggested have led Lakshmi Mittal, an Indian steel magnate, to leave the UK.
Farage said: “We cannot help those on lower incomes, we cannot help those that need to access public services, if we get rid of those that pay the most tax because they leave and go to Monaco, Dubai, America, or wherever else it is. We need to be grown-up.”
He added: “Of course, the media will say, how will you pay for this? Well, I tell you what we need: some pretty big cuts in the administrative state in this country which has grown out of all proportion.”
The Reform leader continued: “Frankly folks, what we need in this country to pay for the cuts that people deserve and need, we need a British form of Doge, as Elon Musk has got in America. Let’s have a British Doge.”
