Farage: we'd only support a "responsible" budget

A robust approach to deficit reduction would be the key condition of Ukip supporting future Conservative budgets in a confidence and supply deal, Nigel Farage has said.

"I think clearly for someone to govern they have to have people support their budget, and if we thought we saw that they were serious about deficit reduction and being responsible then we would support that budget," Farage explained in an interview with Prospect.

Pressed on what he meant by a “responsible” budget, Farage said he would be looking to today's announcements: “Everything has been leaked about tomorrow apart from what are their budget deficit plans going to be,” he said. “Is it going to be a carbon copy of what we had the last five years that didn't actually work, or are we going to get something that we can believe in?”

“I think they're going to have to make some very clear commitments as to where money is going to be saved from and I'm not quite sure five years ago that was really outlined very clearly,” he added. “The trouble is it's all been Jackanory for the last five years.”

He declined to outline any specific cuts he would like to see, aside from the scrapping of high-speed rail link HS2 and major cuts to the Foreign Aid budget, both already Ukip policies. He also said he thinks any cuts to the NHS, at least in the next parliament, would be untenable, and added that his party will need to look closely at what they would do to state pensions.

Farage was speaking with Prospect to promote his new memoir—the full interview will be published in our April issue, out next week.

An emphasis on deficit reduction has been central to Ukip's message since the party's spring conference in Margate, when Farage said that Ukip MPs would want to hold any government's “feet to the fire” and ensure they met the existing 2017/18 targets for balancing the budget.

This serious economic message matches the “major party” status Ofcom recently granted Ukip, but whether such a hard line on spending scares off the former Labour supporters Farage has been trying to attract remains to be seen.