Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage (Image: Getty)
Reform UK has blasted Sir Keir Starmer after it emerged he plans to blame Nigel Farage and Brexit for tax hikes in Labour’s upcoming Budget. The Prime Minister and Chancellor Rachel Reeves are expected to link a drop in Britain’s productivity to the EU exit.
But Reform deputy leader Richard Tice said: “First Keir blamed the Tories, now he is blaming Nigel, reaffirming his brand of ‘two-tier Keir’. Third time lucky, he should send Rachel back to the complaints department. Hypocrite-in-chief Keir is running out of people to blame after over a year in office. Voters know he is to blame.”
It comes as Ms Reeves is widely expected to unveil more punishing tax hikes at her Budget next month.
Reform Hits Back at Keir Starmer Over Plans to Blame Budget on Nigel Farage
A political row over Britain’s forthcoming Budget has intensified after reports that Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves were considering blaming Nigel Farage and Brexit for some of the economic pressures behind possible tax rises.
The reported strategy immediately drew criticism from Reform UK, which argued that the government should take responsibility for its own fiscal decisions rather than attempting to associate higher taxes with the consequences of Britain’s departure from the European Union.
The dispute emerged in October 2025, as the government prepared for a difficult November Budget and faced growing concern about the state of public finances. Reports at the time suggested that the Office for Budget Responsibility was preparing to downgrade its productivity forecasts, potentially creating a significant additional gap in the government’s finances. The Times reported that ministers were considering linking that deterioration to the economic consequences of Brexit and, politically, to Farage’s long campaign for Britain to leave the EU.
For Reform, however, the distinction between Brexit’s economic effects and responsibility for an individual Budget was central to its response.
Reform challenges Labour’s argument
Reform politicians argued that Starmer’s approach amounted to shifting responsibility for difficult tax decisions onto a political opponent.
Richard Tice, one of Reform’s senior figures, criticised the suggestion that Brexit should be used as an explanation for future tax rises. The argument from Reform was that the government had been elected with its own economic programme and therefore had to explain how it intended to manage taxation, spending, borrowing and growth.
The controversy was not simply about Farage personally. It reflected a much broader disagreement about how Britain’s economic performance since Brexit should be interpreted.
The government and Labour figures argued that leaving the European Union had created additional economic barriers, particularly in trade and investment. Reform and other Brexit supporters disputed the extent to which current economic difficulties could reasonably be attributed to the 2016 referendum.
The Independent reported that government officials were preparing for a possible downgrade in productivity forecasts that could have created an additional funding requirement of roughly £20 billion. At the same time, the government had repeatedly said that it would not raise VAT, income tax or National Insurance at the November Budget, although pressure for additional revenue was growing.
That combination created a politically difficult situation for Labour.
Why Brexit became part of the Budget argument
The economic argument centred on productivity.
Productivity measures how much output an economy generates from the labour and capital used to produce it. If productivity expectations fall, the government’s expected tax revenues can also weaken relative to spending commitments.
The Times reported that official estimates suggested the British economy could be around £120 billion larger by 2035 if the UK had remained inside the European Union than under the existing outlook. The figure was presented as an estimate of the economic difference associated with Brexit rather than a direct calculation of how much money Brexit had literally removed from the Treasury.
That distinction matters.
A weaker long-term economic outlook can affect government finances, but it does not mean that every future tax rise is directly caused by one historical political decision or by one individual politician.
Nevertheless, Labour figures increasingly made the economic consequences of Brexit part of their argument.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said in October 2025 that Brexit was one of the structural problems facing the British economy. He argued that the country had experienced years of low productivity and low growth and that Brexit had added another economic challenge.
His comments gave the emerging government argument greater prominence.
Farage rejects the responsibility
Farage had long presented Brexit as a political project aimed at restoring greater national control over Britain’s laws, borders and economic policy.
His supporters argued that responsibility for implementing Brexit rested with governments that subsequently negotiated Britain’s new relationship with the European Union. Farage himself was not a member of the government responsible for negotiating the withdrawal agreement or designing the post-Brexit economic framework.
That point became particularly important in Reform’s response.
The party could argue that even if Brexit had imposed economic costs, the question of who should be held responsible for a particular Budget was separate.
Reform also had its own economic programme, including proposals for reducing taxation and reforming public spending. That created another element of the political confrontation: Labour could portray Reform’s tax-cutting plans as financially risky, while Reform could argue that Labour was using Brexit as a justification for raising taxes.
The disagreement therefore extended beyond the immediate Budget.
It became a debate about two competing explanations for Britain’s economic difficulties.
Labour’s broader political strategy
The dispute also came at a time when Labour was increasingly focused on Reform UK as a political challenger.
Starmer had sharply increased his criticism of Farage during the 2025 Labour conference. In his conference speech, he portrayed Reform as a major political threat and attacked what he described as the party’s politics of division. The Independent reported that Starmer had also described Farage’s economic proposals as unrealistic and compared some of his tax-cutting promises with the experience of Liz Truss’s premiership.
The decision to connect Farage with the economic consequences of Brexit therefore fitted into a wider political strategy.
However, it also carried risks.
If voters believed the government was using Brexit simply as a political explanation for unpopular tax measures, the message could fail to persuade them. On the other hand, if voters believed Brexit had materially weakened economic performance, Labour could argue that discussing those consequences was a legitimate part of explaining the country’s financial position.
The debate was therefore as much about political accountability as economics.
A difficult question about responsibility
One of the most important questions raised by the controversy was whether responsibility for Britain’s economic position could be assigned to a single political figure.
Farage was one of the most prominent campaigners for Brexit, but the process of leaving the EU involved multiple governments, Parliament, political parties and voters.
The referendum itself was decided by the electorate in June 2016. The Conservative governments that followed negotiated the withdrawal agreement and later the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU.
That means the economic consequences of Brexit cannot be reduced to one politician’s actions alone.
At the same time, supporters of the government’s argument could reasonably point to Farage’s prominent role in campaigning for Leave and his continued defence of Brexit.
This is why the political dispute became so contentious: both sides were discussing different meanings of responsibility.
The wider economic picture
Britain’s fiscal difficulties also had causes extending beyond Brexit.
The country faced weak productivity growth, higher borrowing costs, elevated public debt, pressure on public services and long-term demographic challenges. The House of Lords Library’s September 2026 review of the UK’s fiscal outlook shows that governments have also changed fiscal rules and debt measurements in recent years, illustrating how Britain’s financial framework has evolved beyond the Brexit question.
Consequently, any Budget decision would have to be considered within a much wider economic context.
Tax policy, government spending, interest payments, economic growth and productivity all affect the public finances.
This made the political argument over Farage especially significant. Reform wanted the public to distinguish between the historical debate over Brexit and the government’s immediate responsibility for taxation. Labour wanted to emphasise the longer-term economic consequences of leaving the EU.
Neither argument by itself could settle the broader economic question.
The debate over tax rises
The controversy also highlighted the difficulty of explaining tax increases to voters.
According to reporting at the time, Treasury officials were preparing for a substantial fiscal challenge. The government faced pressure to raise additional revenue while simultaneously maintaining its political commitments.
The Independent reported that estimates of the potential tax requirement ranged as high as £30 billion, although the exact scale remained uncertain before the Budget and depended on economic forecasts and government decisions.
That uncertainty was important.
Budget forecasts can change as economic conditions develop. Government decisions can also alter the amount of revenue required. Therefore, predictions made before the Budget should not automatically be treated as final outcomes.
For Reform, this uncertainty strengthened its argument that ministers should explain their own decisions rather than attributing them principally to Farage.
For Labour, however, the argument was that governments inherit economic conditions and that Brexit formed part of that inheritance.
A dispute likely to continue
The confrontation between Reform and Labour demonstrated how closely Britain’s economic debate had become linked to the country’s unresolved argument over Brexit.
For Reform, blaming Farage for Budget tax rises risked confusing responsibility for Brexit with responsibility for current fiscal policy.
For Labour, the economic effects of Brexit were relevant to understanding Britain’s productivity and growth performance and therefore could legitimately form part of the Budget debate.
The distinction between those two positions is significant.
Britain’s economic performance is shaped by many factors, and assigning responsibility requires separating measurable economic effects from political messaging. Brexit can be examined through trade, investment, productivity and growth data, while Budget decisions can be examined through taxation, spending, borrowing and fiscal rules.
Ultimately, the dispute over Farage was not only about one politician or one Budget. It reflected a much larger question about how Britain should understand the economic legacy of Brexit and how governments should explain difficult fiscal choices to the public.
As the Budget approached, Reform and Labour were therefore preparing to present sharply different interpretations of the same economic pressures. The argument over who should carry responsibility was becoming almost as important politically as the tax and spending decisions themselves.