Farage wins seven-way BBC election debate, poll finds

Nigel Farage addresses the audience during the BBC's seven-party debate on Friday. Photo: Jeff Overs/AFP

Nigel Farage won the seven-way BBC election debate on Friday night, a snap poll showed.

A poll of 1,031 voters by More in Common showed reformist Britain's new leader won the debate, followed by Angela Rayner, Labour's deputy. He received 25 per cent of the vote and Ms Rayner 19 per cent.

Carla Denayer of the Green Party was third most popular with 11 per cent, Stephen Flynn of the Scottish National Party received 10 per cent and Penny Mordaunt of the Conservatives received seven percent.

Daisy Cooper, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Plaid Cymru's Rhun ap Iorwerth received five and two percent respectively.

Mr Farage, who returned to the forefront of reform politics last week and is a candidate for the MP seat in Clacton, Essex, has challenged his political rivals on immigration and net-zero emissions policies. 

He said Britain was facing a “demographic crisis” that was “making us poorer” and said migration had been between 30,000 and 40,000 people a year since the late 1940s. 

But 2.7 million came under Tony Blair's government and 4.3 million under the Tory government, despite their promise of «less than tens of thousands a year» in the 2010 manifesto.

After a heated debate between Ms Mordaunt and Ms Rayner over green policies, Mr Farage said the UK was «living in a fool's paradise» , and called net zero a “bad policy” that is “bad for people.”

He said the UK was exporting carbon emissions by taxing companies and moving production overseas, and said the country needed to «change the funding model» of the NHS and adopt a French-style system.

He added, that France, which invests about the same amount of money as Britain into its health care, gets significantly better results on key treatments, and praised its model based on compulsory health insurance, where workers and businesses pay for their services through a range of schemes. .

The UK reform leader also told the audience: “You can shoplift now, any of you,” saying that “there is a decline in law and order in society in this country.” He supported expanding stop and search powers and said police should not worry about being called racist.