Farage gives closing speech at Reform party conference – live

Labour will tell members next week that change has “begun” and that the “chaos” of Tory rule must never be repeated.

Labour’s party conference begins in Liverpool on Sunday and, according to The Times, the conference slogan will be “change begins”.

Despite a positive offering at conference, there are signs things are not going well behind the scenes. One cabinet minister told the paper that the Downing Street operation was a “complete circus” and another said they were “extremely worried” about the impact of several weeks of negative press on the government’s approval ratings.

One senior Labour figure told The Times that the government needed to get a grip on bad headlines about donations for clothes and special advisor pay.

They said: “They just need to get a grip. We’re going into conference and all Keir is going to get asked about is taking freebies and infighting in Downing Street.”

Morgan McSweeney, Sir Keir’s head of political strategy, has reportedly told the cabinet that conference week is “politically vital” for Labour. “The country has never needed renewal more,” he was reported as saying.

Veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott has suggested on social media platform X that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party has “changed into an organisation whose leaders are in the pocket of millionaires”.

Ms Abbott tweeted a picture of Sir Keir on Saturday with the caption: “Ellie Reeves MP says ‘Labour’s GE victory was only possible because under Keir’s leadership we changed the party’ Changed it into an organisation whose leaders are in the pocket of millionaires?”

Ms Abbott, who was suspended from the party last year, had the Labour whip restored before the general election.

Sir Keir and other senior leaders within the Labour party have been facing criticism over accepting thousands of pounds in donations for clothes. Sir Keir, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves have all pledged to no longer take donations for clothing.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has said that he has set out the “building blocks” that will help grow the party into a nation-wide election force.

He described Reform’s party conference as a “resounding success for this party”. In his closing address on Sunday, he added: “The first thing I think we’ve learnt, is we’ve learnt about organisation… there is a limit to what the leadership team and the management structure can give you. Yes of course we can bring the ideas, we can make the news, we can dominate social media… and we can bring together conferences like this. But that only takes us so far.”

Speaking about giving away his ownership of Reform, Mr Farage said he had given power to the members to grow the movement.

He reiterated the need for planning and professionalism to grow the party in different areas of the country, and establish campaigning groups and infrastructure in every area.

Mr Farage promised that the “sky is the limit for this party”, adding: “There is nothing we cannot achieve”.

He claimed the conference had been the “most joyous gathering of a political party, I reckon, that has ever happened in modern history”.

He said the key take away message from the conference was “optimism”.

The union Unite will try to force a vote on reversing the government’s cuts to winter fuel allowance at the party’s conference.

The conference, which is being held in Liverpool, will start tomorrow. Unite has submitted a motion calling for “a vision where pensioners are not the first to face a new wave of cuts”.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been under increasing pressure to scrap the plan to cut winter fuel payments for pensioners.

Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has defended the move saying that “tough decisions” were necessary to stabilise the economy and boost growth. While the Unite vote will be politically inconvenient, it will not be binding.

Sir Keir is expected to meet with union general secretaries today in an effort to persuade them not to side against him on the fuel allowance vote.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is considering increasing alcohol duties in next month’s Budget, it has been reported

She has been presented with forecasts that show that putting up alcohol duty would raise an extra £800m next year, the Telegraph reports.

Alcohol duty rises each year in line with inflation unless the chancellor decides to freeze it.

While the Retail Price Index (RPI) measure of inflation is set to be 2 per cent next year, industry sources told the paper that forecasts produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility point to a potential increase in duties by more than 6 per cent.

Ministers have sought to end the perception they are leading “very different lives” to the public ahead of Labour’s party conference amid efforts to draw a line under a row about clothing donations to high-profile government figures.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said it was important to demonstrate the government’s priorities are “the country’s priorities” after it emerged on the eve of Labour’s annual gathering that clothing donations would no longer be accepted by the prime minister and his top brass.

Neither Sir Keir Starmer, Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner nor Chancellor Rachel Reeves will accept such donations in the future.

Labour leaders are headed to Liverpool for their party conference, with Sir Keir due to speak on Tuesday.

Sir Keir Starmer’s popularity ratings will bounce back, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has said.

In an interview with The Guardian, Ms Rayner predicted that Sir Keir would become more popular as the public started to feel the impact of a Labour government.

She said: “I think he’ll be remembered as somebody who fixed the foundations. Public service is not about being popular, it’s about being responsible more than anything. That’s more important.”

Ms Rayner also promised to give extra powers to mayors around the country. She said: “We’re going to make sure they’ve got all the ingredients to thrive because… where you put power with people with skin in the game, you can truly deliver.

“My ambition is to have more powers and to have more mayors… I’m not going to force people to have a mayor but I do want to see more, and deeper powers for those areas.”

Speaking about Labour’s plans for the future, she pledged: “Within five years, people will have a better life. We won’t be able to fix everything immediately, but you will see the sprigs and the difference that the Labour government has made.”

The public commentary around clothing donations is not what Labour wants to focus on as the party goes into its conference, culture secretary Lisa Nandy has suggested.

She told Sky News: “We certainly don’t want the news and the commentary to be dominated by conversations about clothes when we have a really positive agenda for this country.

“But I think these have always been very difficult issues in British politics. We rightly have a system, I think, where the taxpayer doesn’t fund these things, we don’t claim on expenses for them so MPs will always take donations, will always take gifts in kind, MPs of all political parties have historically done that and that is the system that we have.”

She said she had not received any clothing gifts from donors, but added: “I don’t make any judgment about what other Members of Parliament do.

“The only judgment I would make is, if they are breaking the rules and they are trying to hide what they are doing, that is when problems arise.”

Senior government figures’ decision to stop accepting donations of clothes is aimed at ending the perception they are living “very different lives” from the public amid ongoing cost-of-living pressures, Lisa Nandy suggested.

Asked about the reasoning behind the decision, the culture secretary told BBC Breakfast: “For exactly the reason that you just said, that people are really struggling in this country, and we don’t want people to believe that we are living very different lives from them.

“Most people who go into politics, of all political parties, are ordinary people who want to make people’s lives better.

“It is important to us that people know that that is what we are as a government and that we have their priorities absolutely up front and centre of ours.

“The country’s priorities are our priorities.”

Ms Nandy said the most important thing the government had done since coming to office was being “open and transparent about what we are doing”.

Sir Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves will stop taking donations for clothing after a row over freebies.

Political correspondent Millie Cooke is at the Reform UK conference this weekend.

Here is part of her dispatch from the first day on Friday:

“Reform UK’s conference had the buzz of a party punching well above its weight. And that is exactly what the party’s leadership is attempting to do. Nigel Farage and other senior figures spent today’s conference – the largest it has ever held – trying to persuade its members, and the wider public, that it is a credible electoral force.

They even went so far as to suggest Mr Farage could be the next prime minister.

With just five sitting MPs, the most the party has ever secured in its short history, it’s certainly a bold ambition.

Telling members “the sky is the limit”, Mr Farage also laid down some serious policy changes that he said would help get them there.

Speaking without notes on the main stage, after walking in to the sound of Eminem’s ‘Without Me’ accompanied by a selection of pyrotechnics, Mr Farage – perhaps underwhelmingly to some watchers – said the party needs to emulate… the Liberal Democrats.”