General election 2019: Nigel Farage launches Brexit party’s policies

Moving away now from the Brexit party’s “contract” launch to the unveiling of Plaid Cymru’s manifesto.

Adam Price, the party’s leader, struck a defiantly hopeful and optimistic mood at the launch of his manifesto.

Promising to keep his anger in check, he repeatedly stressed there was hope for Wales if it could tap into the power of its people.

He started off with a football joke, claiming that both the Welsh star Gareth Bale and Plaid put Wales first – Bale is in a spot of bother for standing behind a banner suggesting that his priorities are Wales, golf and only then his club, Real Madrid.

“Let’s make the coming decade the decade of hope and change” he said. Price pledged that by 2030 Wales could be zero carbon, zero waste, zero poverty. “We have the power, we have the potential.”

Price said the answers for Wales won’t come from Islington or the Bullingdon Club, but from its valleys and the villages. He said Wales could be the cradle of a green jobs revolution” and compared his ambition to that of JFK at the time of the space race.

In its manifesto, Plaid promised more doctors, nurses, police, more social housing. “Let’s inject some hope,” he said. “Hope, it’s us. The future, it’s us,” he said.

Despite Wales voting in favour of leaving the EU, Price said:

Europe is core to the future of Wales. This Brexit is not for us. It never was, it never will be.

A summary of Plaid’s green revolution pledges:

The electrification of all mainline rail lines by 2030 and electrification of the Valleys railways, followed by the North Wales Coast railway.

Building a super metro in the south east of Wales, a new Metro system for Swansea Bay and the western valleys, a metro for the north east of Wales, and reopening rail services in the Amman, Tawe, Neath, and Dulais valleys.

The creation of a trans-Wales railway and a Cross-rail for the Valleys, expanding the trans-Wales bus network with high quality buses using renewable energy, and a new, publicly-owned regional bus company for the south of Wales.

The construction of tidal lagoons in Swansea Bay, Cardiff, and Colwyn Bay, an offshore windfarm off Ynys Môn, and a barrage on the River Usk.

The roll-out of a massive £5 billion home energy efficiency programme and building 20,000 green social houses.

Farage welcomes the apparent movement within Tory party policy towards supporting an Australian-style points-based system, but criticises a failure to commit to “reducing numbers”.

He claims that the Conservatives have no intention of reducing the number of migrants coming to the UK because many of the party’s “big business backers want as much cheap labour as they can possibly get”.

The Brexit party leader says that the UK has a “population crisis directly as a result of policies since the late 1990s” and calls for a hardline approach to immigration. He suggests immediately deporting those who arrive in the UK clandestinely.

The Brexit party’s plans would be paid for by £200bn of savings by cutting the foreign aid budget, ceasing EU payments and a suggested scrapping of the HS2 project, according to Farage.

He also says £7bn could be claimed back from the European Investment Bank and claims HS2 is a project costing £100bn to benefit “just a few thousand people”.

“We would want to save that money,” he says, adding that he would “stop sending” £13bn to the EU every year and proposes also cutting the foreign aid budget, which is currently set at 0.7% of GDP.

He says the Brexit party would introduce a “citizens’ initiative”, triggering a referendum if 5 million people sign a valid register calling for a public vote on a particular issue.

Farage calls for a constitutional convention to work out what sort of written constitution the country needed and adds that civil servants should also be made to declare their political neutrality.

He proposes to scrap VAT on fuel bills after a “clean-break Brexit” and to stop companies earning less than £10,000 a year from paying corporation tax.

The party would “cut the cost of living” by removing VAT on domestic fuel bills, which he says would save the average family £65 per year.

“It’ll take a big weight off the mind of many struggling small companies.”

Farage says the party decided to call the document containing their policy proposals a contract because a word association test with “manifesto” arrived at the word “lie”.

He says the Brexit party has already changed the landscape of politics and criticises the lack of discussion during the election run-up on the withdrawal agreement and the terms of Brexit.

The debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson on Tuesday “exposed fact that Labour do not have a party-wide position on which way it would campaign”, he declares, before saying that the prime minister indicated a change of direction recently – which led to the Brexit party standing down candidates.

In an apparent slight to the Liberal Democrats, Pew says the Brexit party does not present itself as being able to form the next government, but stresses it can lead the agenda.

He says many of the people in the Brexit party – which will field 274 candidates – heading up policy areas have real-world experience and it is hoped their policies will become mainstream.

Citing the concept of a clean-break Brexit, regional infrastructure investment and the cancellation of HS2 – which is now being reviewed – Pew says the party has been influential.

He calls for no extended transition and for Boris Johnson to stick to his Brexit commitments.

Pew then claims that the party will set out proposals to be budget neutral over five years and highlights what he said is a figure of £1.8tn in outstanding debt that the UK owes. He adds that servicing that debt costs £40bn a year – constituting most of defence budget.

“The magic money tree has been shaken hard and is now fairly bare,” he says. “The spending commitments of the two main parties are not going to be delivered.”

He congratulates the party for polling 17%, and then playsa sombre election broadcast which primarily attacks Labour before Nigel Farage takes to the stage.