Farage ends conference with unity plea after rowing back on small boats pledge

Nigel Farage capped off Reform UK’s conference with a plea for party unity after rowing back on a pledge to stop small boat crossings within two weeks of taking office.

The Birmingham conference was bigger than previous years, and showcased the party’s efforts to present a more professional outlook.

But it also had some controversial moments – including appearances on the main stage by a vaccine-sceptic cardiologist and Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers.

Mr Farage ended with a plea to attendees to put themselves forward to run as Reform UK candidates, saying thousands were needed in 2026.

He also called for disputes to be kept private.

He said: “My sort of big message at the end of this conference, as we head towards those massive elections in Wales, in Scotland, in London, in the Midlands and elsewhere next year, is that you are the people’s army and to succeed, it needs one thing: discipline.

“Can we please exercise discipline and air our disagreements between each other in private and not in public?”

In his Friday speech, the Reform UK leader had told an audience at the NEC it would take a fortnight of him entering Downing Street to halt small boat arrivals, if he won an election.

But on Sunday, he said he would need a legal basis first.

He said he would introduce similar laws to those passed by Australian prime minister Tony Abbott over a decade ago to stop arrivals from Indonesia.

“As soon as the law is in place. As soon as you have the ability to detain and deport, you’ll stop it in two weeks,” he said in an interview to be aired on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

Mr Farage’s Friday speech focused on the party preparing for government and struck an optimistic tone as he predicted a “big rift” in Labour amid disarray in Sir Keir Starmer’s party – and said a general election could come in 2027.

He also hammered home Reform UK’s mass deportation policy, saying: “You cannot come here illegally and stay – we will stop the boats within two weeks of winning government.

Lucy Connolly, the former childminder and wife of a Conservative councillor jailed over her tweets in the aftermath of the Southport murders last year, was greeted with rapturous applause from the audience – many of whom stood as she took to the stage.

She said she had voted for Reform UK at the last election, in a live recording of The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast with Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan.

Asked what she would like to do going forward, she said: “I’d really love to use my experience to work with, hopefully, Reform.”

Two former Tory ministers were seen at the conference ahead of its finale.

Ann Widdecombe, former Tory Home Office minister who later became a Brexit Party MEP under Mr Farage, as well as Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg – who was Boris Johnson’s Commons leader – were at the NEC.

Sir Jacob said his daughter had joined Reform UK, “but I’m not going to”.

Attendees at the conference passed motions on Saturday, including one that will call for Reform’s immigration policy to be broadened to include a review of asylum approvals by Labour and Conservative governments.

Lancashire County Council deputy leader councillor Simon Evans proposed the motion, which would see a review of immigration decisions on potential illegal migrants, where the police national computer and counter terror checks were bypassed.

Similar motions on repealing the 2008 Climate Change Act and removing “gender ideology from public organisations” were unanimously passed.

Nottinghamshire county councillor Kelvin Wright, an NHS critical care consultant for 25 years, said it was “not acceptable for any institution to subvert these spaces”.