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Nigel Farage has said Reform UK must “model itself on the Liberal Democrats” if it wants to succeed in upcoming elections.
He outlined plans to “professionalise and democratise” the party, saying it was “amateurism” that let Reform down at this year’s general election.
Mr Farage used his speech at his party’s conference to announce the creation of hundreds of local associations, as well as overhauling the party structure to hand back ownership to its members.
The MP for Clacton told the audience the “sky is the limit” for Reform’s ambitions.
“If we succeed in 2025, we will build even bigger in 2026 and we will keep going. Then I promise you, the sky is the limit”, he said.
Giving his keynote speech on the main stage of the Reform UK conference in Birmingham, Mr Farage pointed to the Liberal Democrats success in winning 72 seats with fewer votes than Reform UK.
“I never thought I’d say this, but we have to model ourselves on the Liberal Democrats.
“That doesn’t mean that you’ll see me cascading down waterfalls and I won’t behave in a way that I think is particularly stupid even if others think I do”, he said.
“But the Liberal Democrats build branches, the Liberal Democrats win seats at district, county and unitary levels.
“The Liberal Democrats build on that strength, the Liberal Democrats put literature and leaflets through doors repeatedly in their target areas.
“And despite the fact they haven’t got any policies at all – in fact the whole thing’s really rather vacuous isn’t it – they managed with a vote much lower than ours to win 72 seats in parliament.”
Mr Farage said Reform has not “got room for a few extremists” to “wreck” its work.
Speaking about the last election, which saw Mr Farage’s party win five seats and four million votes, he said: “We could have done better. We could have done better, but at that stage of the game… we weren’t big enough.”
He added: “We are just at that stage of our development, we weren’t big enough, wealthy enough, professional enough to vet general election candidates properly. And we were let down – that amateurism let us down.
“We could have won a lot more votes and there are lessons that we need to learn from that.”
Mr Farage on Thursday announced he is “relinquishing” control of the party and giving up his majority shareholder position.
The conference, which is the party’s largest yet, “marks the coming of age” of the party, he said.
With 80,000 members, Reform said that ticket sales were four times higher this year than last.