Nigel Farage blasts 'Rejoiner parliament' as he demands ECHR referendum

Nigel Farage made his maiden speech as MP for Clacton in the Commons this lunchtime, using it to tear into pro-EU MPs and to warn voters that Sir Keir Starmer's government does not care about immigration.

Mr Farage paid the traditional tributes to his Conservative predecessor and lavished words on his new Essex constituency, before blasting his fellow MPs for wanting to rejoin the European Union.

The Reform UK leader also demanded a referendum on the ECHR, while calling for welfare reform to help his poorer constituents into work.

Mr Farage observed that one thing he didn't expect as a new MP was to feel even more outnumbered in the Commons as a Brexiteer than he did during his career as a member of the European Parliament.

He joked: "It's very different indeed. It's smaller, there's not a chauffeur-driven Mercedes available for each member, no large lump sums of money... I wonder whether that's why so many in the British political system seem to adore the EU so much!"

"What I perhaps didn't expect was to come here and find myself even more outnumbered with my Reform team than we were in the European Parliament.

"There were more supporters of Brexit in the European Parliament than I sense there are in this parliament of 2024."

He fumed: "This is a Remainers' parliament! I suspect in many cases it's really a Rejoiners parliament".

Mr Farage observed that looking through the King's Speech, the word 'immigration' is mentioned only twice, and ‘asylum’ only once.

He quipped that this is "not surprising, as when Sir Keir Starmer laid out the six big priorities for the general election for the Labour Party he didn’t mention legal or illegal immigration".

"That’s the other area that the five of us sitting over here are going to find ourselves massively outnumbered in this house is because we actually want to talk about these issues".

He described the ongoing population crisis as "the biggest impact affecting people’s lives, damaging their quality of life and virtually nobody in this place even wants to talk about it", while warning that the UK cannot stop migrant boat crossings either with Rwanda or with "smashing" the gangs as Sir Keir Starmer has promised.

Mr Farage said the migration crisis is largely the fault of the European Convention on Human Rights, which while it was set up in the wake of WWII “with the very best of intentions” has now “completely outlived its usefulness”.

He made a “fun suggestion” that the Labour Government should go to the people with a referendum on continued membership of the court.

Mr Farage paid tribute to his Clacton predecessor Giles Watling, whom he described as: “Nothing even vaguely conservative about him but a jolly nice chap”