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Marble Arch cycle lane (inset: Nigel Farage) (credit: Simon MacMichael/Gage Skidmore via CC BY-SA 2.0)Nigel Farage lashes out at “cycle lanes that no one uses”, accusing councils facing bankruptcy of wasting “tens of millions” on cycling infrastructure
Nigel Farage has criticised local councils “on the verge of bankruptcy” for wasting “tens of millions” of pounds on “cycle lanes that no one uses”, ahead of the May 2025 local elections.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast this morning, the Leader of Reform UK said local authorities were prioritising projects such as bike lanes and climate departments over essential services, accusing them of mismanaging public funds.
“You look at where they spend the money — tens of millions being spent on cycle lanes that no one uses, huge departments of people dealing with climate change, but all people really want are proper, well-run local services,” he said.
The Clacton MP made the comments as part of his wider critique of local government ahead of the upcoming elections, where Reform UK is standing candidates across England in mayoral contests as well as contesting for seats in several councils, a recent Guardian report also indicating that over 60 of its candidates are Tory defectors.
> Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party to target pro-cycling councils in next year’s local elections
He claimed that most councils were “on the verge of bankruptcy,” and accused senior staff of awarding themselves “ever-increasing sums of money” while basic services such as road maintenance and adult social care were under strain.
“It’s local government they’re voting for. Of course, it’s very important for our roads, dealing with potholes, adult social care, children with educational needs problems… So these elections do really matter,” he said.
Reform UK has seen a boost in national polling in recent months, and Farage said the party’s focus now was turning those figures into tangible results.
“Our poll ratings are roughly double what they were at the general election last year,” he said. “If we do that [win seats], then people will say, ‘You know what? The rise of Reform is real. They are now a major party, and they are now the major challenger to the Labour government.’”
Farage’s criticism of cycle lanes is not new. In 2020, he pledged to stand against what he described as “pro-cycling” local councils in the following year’s local elections.
At the time, Farage’s then-policy adviser Ben Habib singled out the then-Conservative-led Wandsworth Council as “anti-motorist” for introducing temporary active travel measures during the Covid-19 pandemic. The party claimed such schemes were contributing to increased congestion and harming local businesses.
> Brexit Party hopeful candidate begs Nigel Farage for penny-farthing spokesman job
While Reform ultimately fielded very few candidates in the 2021 elections, the strategy signalled the start of an ongoing campaign against what it portrays as “anti-car” policies being pursued by councils across the country.
In a series of newspaper columns in 2020, Farage had also described the temporary cycle lanes and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) as “madness,” accusing the government of “virtue signalling” and claiming that the infrastructure lay unused while contributing to traffic congestion and pollution.
“The volume of cyclists using many of the new cycle lanes is … so low that they cannot be justified,” he wrote in The Sunday Telegraph at the time. “In far too many cases, all the lanes and road closures have succeeded in doing is causing traffic jams.”
He vowed: “My new party will stand candidates against any and every local councillor who backs these new cycle lanes and road closures.”
> Nigel Farage forges new career as anti-cycling bingo caller
That campaign came amid a wider politicisation of active travel infrastructure, with then-Conservative mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey also pledging to suspend LTNs in London if elected, and accusing then-Mayor Sadiq Khan of mismanaging Transport for London’s finances.
Farage had also penned an article for the Mail in 2020, essentially broadcasting his rage towards cyclists and cycling infrastructure, making use of pretty much every tired, old and incorrect cliché — also known as the anti-cycling bingo — such as cyclists not paying road tax and ignoring traffic rules, cycle lanes killing businesses and depriving hard-working motorists of their means of transport, and even heralding the “war on motorists” being waged by the “cycle lobby”.
In 2021, the former leader of the UK Independence Party once again complained about cycle lanes, taking to Twitter to share a video of an ambulance stuck in a gridlock next to a bike lane in London, writing: “This is totally insane. These cycle lanes are a joke.”
Adwitiya joined road.cc in 2023 as a news writer after completing his masters in journalism from Cardiff University. His dissertation focused on active travel, which soon threw him into the deep end of covering everything related to the two-wheeled tool, and now cycling is as big a part of his life as guitars and football. He has previously covered local and national politics for Voice Cymru, and also likes to write about science, tech and the environment, if he can find the time. Living right next to the Taff trail in the Welsh capital, you can find him trying to tackle the brutal climbs in the valleys.
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65 comments
Hey dipstick Nigel, we should close all the roads round my way because if I go out at 2 or 3 in the morning, there isn't a vehicle in sight. - empty you know Waste of money, I say. May as well close them all, along with the virtually non-existent bike lanes, and make everyone travel by helicopter.
For anyone who is not a fan of NF (funny how those initials turned out, eh?)...
https://markthomasinfo.co.uk/store/#!/Please-Mind-The-Farage-stickers-pa...
He should stick to plane crashes
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-11730133
Quite possibly a metaphor for his political career. Or his political career is a metaphor for his aviation career.
Yeah, whatever. Shut up and fuck off Farage, you fucking bell end.
Hey, Nigel! Leave those lanes alone!
Every time he opens his gob nothing but shite comes out.
Nigel Farage gets his 10th job as he becomes Sky News Australia commentator
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/apr/09/nigel-farage-gets-his-10th-job-as-he-becomes-sky-news-australia-commentator
And of course he was happy to accept all sorts of MEP payments'n'perks while campaigning to get Britain out of the EU.
As I recall, he also claimed £7m in expenses and employed both his wife and mistress whilst an MEP. Clearly the upstanding, moral and honest kind of politician we need.
Why do the media give 10 jobs the oxygen of publicity. His days consists of two things grifting for his sideline interests and making up sh1t for media interviews.
How he fits time in as a constituency MP who knows...... The good news is on Peston last night he looked quite old and unwell; I am hoping he's taken quickly.....
You are the answer to your own question.
The thing about Farage and his type of liar is that it's always something else to be rid of - immigrants, the EU, bike lanes, human rights law and then there will be sunlit uplands and unicorns gambolling.
people fall for it again and again.
Other than Bike lanes, he,s correct, all the others are used to get/keep the unwanted in this country, a country that was once a Green and Pleasant Land, now everything must change to suit the UNWANTED, im under the sign Unicorn, I suppose your in the camp of Build, Concrete, Tarmac the country over
Thank you for that intelligent and literate contribution to the debate. Now please pull the chain.
Bloody continentals (some of them even from places like Turkey!) coming over here changing our way of life, cutting down all the lovely trees and building over stuff everywhere it was paradise before that we only had to work a few hours a day and we didn't have all these elites telling us what to do...
With all this cycle infra stuff we'll just be covering the place in tarmac ([1] [2] [3] [4] [5]) to facilitate the hobby of a handful of people!
Snark aside ... well, yeah. The sober and boring response is: we're still producing more people. The hallmark of people is "mess" and usually "overconsumption" * and the hallmark of modern people is "built environment". Currently that is "mostly roads" because the dominant mode is the extremely space-and-resource-inefficient private motor car.
So until "something completely different" happens ** that will increase. And the only options we can (possibly) pick with any likelihood of occurring are "more of the same" or "perhaps slightly less of the same, because we've (initially) built more - to encourage a shift away from all those journeys being driven).
* Humans are clever - we live beyond our means because we can. We're usually either too clever or not clever enough to organise differently.
** We don't need to travel anymore because metaverse / war / disease / asteroid / global warming change human behaviour drastically (or remove humans) etc. One putative tech "fix" - robotaxis - may well happen so some degree (already here in minature in a few places). But I don't think that will change "roads" much or give us "nicer places" and indeed may have some decidedly negative imacts.
And for further context, as of 2022, the "build, concrete, tarmac camp" has managed to do so to less than 9% of the UK.
But we did cut down the trees though (several times apparently) - mostly for fields (currently what we are). And as usual if it was big / not too numerous we killed it all (sometimes but not always to eat).
But most of the change has been gradual (even recently, measured in terms of decades). Hence the "wait - they're going to cut down the last 30 trees for a cycle path?! No!"
The build, concrete, tamac camp don't necessarily have a limit though. As someone said of my city (which has quite recently decided on another major growth spurt "because we need homes") "nobody every lost money building and selling property in Edinburgh". I'm sure there are exceptions but AFAIKS there's your "need" to a first approximation. I'm not aware we have suddenly opened up hundreds of factories requiring a massive increase in the labour force...
Sorry, but please can you try that again in actual English? Thank you.
You OK hon?
The UNWANTED like all the staff who work in the NHS? The low-paid carers who change Reform voters' nappies? Those "unwanted"? PS: check out some actual history of our country, you may surprise yourself with our long history of immigration and diversity.
And the ones who daily deliver UberEats chow to his fat arse and who pointlessly waste hectolitres of water valeting his SUV (only to be covered in filth again the day after).
I'd say that the "unwanted" are all the racist, bigoted fuckwits that think that an accident of birth-place makes you different to other people. I wish we could export the moronic white nationalists to somewhere else - maybe the U.S.? You'd fit right in over there.
I know what (who) I'd like to get rid of....
Nigel Farage is is the voice that fuckwits need to justify their existence.
Farage is a joke and needed to find something to distract from his recent endorsements of Donald Trump.
I read an article recently, describing Farage as a "Golf Club Bore". Seems like a perfect description.
Come and join in the fun over here.
https://road.cc/content/forum/reform-party-and-uks-lurch-towards-fascism...
A lot of this "we are on the side of the motorist crap", came about when the Conservatives accidentally stumbled on hostility to ulez at the Uxbridge by-election and it became a central plank of their policy.
I think labour are pro-europe and are taking steps to build closer ties. Had they proposed to reverse Brexit, they would either have lost the election, or wasted the current parliamentary session arguing about it. Now they are in power, though, they should at the least be criticising Brexit and / or the crap trade deals that resulted from Boris Johnson's laziness (Tories will claim idealism).
If you want a one word summation of him, Alan Bennett described him as "batrachoidal", meaning toadlike, and I've never been able to think of him since without picturing a toad in Barbour and corduroys; in this case of course he is being Mr Toadlike.
Poop, poop!
I don't consider myself a violent man, but I really don't think I'd tire of hitting him with a shovel. I mean, it'd take some pacing - I don't have the upper body stamina I once had - but I think I'd just push on through.
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