Top News

Nigel Farage has said the race to be the UK's next prime minister will be a shootout between him and Sir Keir Starmer. The Reform UK leader insists his party is the main rival to Labour as it continues to surge in the polls.

A recent Electoral Calculus poll-of-polls put the Right-wing party on course to win a majority at the next general election with 30% of the vote, securing it at least 362 seats. Mr Farage's rallying cry comes exactly a year to the day after his stunning political comeback. In the space of just one year, he has led Reform from having one MP - Lee Anderson, who had defected from the Tories - to five now.

, the architect of Brexit promises to "restore our proud nation to its former glory".

Following last month's local election blitz in which the party won swathes of council seats and two mayoralties, Mr Farage said he is now setting his sights on elections in Wales and Scotland next year.

His raid north of the border could begin with this week's Holyrood by-election in Hamilton.

Mr Farage used a visit to the region to accuse Anas Sarwar of "sectarian politics".

He said the Scottish Labour leader has a "record of obsession" - citing a speech he gave in Holyrood in 2020 as evidence of this.

His comments came as he unveiled a new defection to his Reform UK party, with councillor Duncan Massey, who had been a Conservative representative on Aberdeen City Council, now a member.

The Hamilton by-election has been dominated by a row over a Reform advert which has been branded "racist" by the party's opponents. It claims Mr Sarwar will "prioritise" the Pakistani community in Scotland.

Asked about this, Mr Farage insisted Reform UK "don't talk about race at all".

He pointed out that his party's chairman, Zia Yusuf, is Scottish-born and that his parents come from the Indian subcontinent.

Mr Farage continued: "We think everybody should be treated equally. We object, very strongly, to the segmentation of people into different types."

Adding that the Scottish Labour leader has a "record of obsession on this issue", he went on to reference a speech Mr Sarwar gave in 2020 where he noted that key figures across Scotland, from the judiciary, to council chief executives to head teachers, were all white.

Mr Farage said: "I think that speech he gave was sectarian in its very nature - we are the south Asian community, we are going to take over the country and take over the world.

"We believe what he said was a form of sectarian politics and we don't like it one little bit."

His comments came after First Minister John Swinney claimed the Reform UK leader "doesn't care about Scotland".

The SNP leader spoke about the "deeply concerning rise in support for Farage" after an opinion poll suggested Reform could be the second-largest party at Holyrood after next May's Scottish elections.