No, Nigel did not say that he had abandoned a tax-cutting agenda. He said merely that Reform would make some immediate modest changes and then make material cuts when the economy was in better shape.
Mrs Thatcher also inherited a collapsing economy in which Britain was known as the sick man of Europe and was virtually having its affairs managed by the IMF. She understood clearly that the biggest fueller of growth is always a cut in taxes, but even she spread the reductions from a modest start to more serious cuts later.
Thus in 1980, the year after she took office, she cut the top rate from 83 per cent to 60 per cent, which sent a welcome signal that Britain liked success, but it was not till 1989 that she cut the 60 per cent to 40 per cent and it was not until 1988 that the standard rate was finally cut to 25 per cent, a significant fall from the 33 per cent she had inherited.
In short, Mrs T sent early signals and then action followed as her policies bore fruit. Reform will follow a similar path: get the economy moving, and taxes will fall.
The speech Nigel made, which was long and comprehensive, was probably the best package of promises for business heard in years.
Red tape cut, EU rules repealed, encouragement for non-doms to return and reverse the brain drain and above all to have the oversight of business growth carried out by people who have made a success of business rather than by people who have never run a whelk stall but who happen to be MPs. Once that would not have been necessary, but today parliament is full of nonentities.
It comes down to a matter of will and also of common sense. There is no point buying our energy from other countries when we have so many reserves of our own, so Reform will scrap all net zero costs and subsidies.
The success of an economy is the sum of the success of all the little and large concerns operating within it, and that is why business matters. Successful businesses create jobs and spending, and in turn, jobs and spending create wealth.
I have one point of disagreement with Nigel Farage. It pains me to spell it out - Ann Widdecombe | Getty Images
Yet our chancellor does not appear to understand that, combining a rise in the costs of employing through National Insurance increases with a full-on workers’ rights bill.
Perhaps Reform’s approach is best summed up in Farage’s phrase “the party of alarm clock Britain” i.e. the overriding concern will be to reward workers. Britain will no longer dish out benefits on the basis of a Zoom interview, but will examine cases in person.
The nation will be competitive with, not a vassal of, the EU. Wealth creation will be encouraged. De-regulation will be significant, not token.
The bloated public sector will be sharply reduced, net zero will no longer rule the roost, and our borders will be controlled, which alone will save billions.
Of course, most of those promises have been made before- by the Tories- but like pie crusts, they were made to be broken.
Reform makes them to keep them. None of it will be done by Tuesday afternoon, but within a year of Reform taking office, the current trends should be visibly reversing, and within the lifetime of a parliament, that reversal should be nearing completion, if not actually completed.
Yet there is one area where I do disagree with Nigel: unfortunately, I do not think we can bring down this government by 2027.
On the contrary, I miserably suspect that we are going to have to suffer until 2029. Starmer may no longer be PM by then, but Labour, with its overwhelming parliamentary majority, will still be the government because turkeys do not vote for Christmas.
I hope Nigel is right, but I fear I may be.