Dad-dancing Nigel Farage enjoys boozy celebration at Reform UK’s convention

Nigel Farage showed off his dad-dancing last night during a boozy party at Reform UK’s conference in Birmingham.

Just hours after delivering his keynote speech at the National Exhibition Centre, the 60-year-old was back on stage for what organisers called an ‘evening gala party’.

The former UKIP leader crooned along as a band played Frankie Valli hit ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’.

As the song reached its catchy chorus, Mr Farage threw his arms around as he danced across the stage.

Speaking to the crowd of Reform activists afterwards, he asked: ‘Do you reckon [Keir] Starmer will do that at the Labour conference?’

Party members had earlier cheered and chanted ‘Nigel, Nigel, Nigel’ when Mr Farage arrived at Friday evening’s bash.

Nigel Farage showed off his dad-dancing last night during a boozy party at Reform UK’s conference in Birmingham

Just hours after delivering his keynote speech at the National Exhibition Centre, the 60-year-old was back on stage for what organisers called an ‘evening gala party’

Explaining why he had organised the ‘gala party’, the Reform leader said: ‘Is this the ‘have a party’ party?

‘I was asked earlier on, a few months ago, what should we do on the evening of the conference. Should we do what everybody else does and have a big formal sit-down dinner?

‘I said ‘no, we want singing, dancing, drinking, laughter, fun’ and – you know why – because unlike the other parties, we are real people.’

Prior to the evening party, Mr Farage had earlier appeared on the same stage to deliver his keynote conference speech. 

He described the weekend’s conference as the point his party ‘comes of age’ after it secured five MPs at the general election in July.

Mr Farage admitted he had a ‘job to professionalise and democratise Reform UK’ after his shock return to frontline politics at the beginning of the election campaign.

He told the 4,000-strong crowd that he thinks his ‘promise to professionalise the party is now on track’.

The Reform leader added: ‘I also promise that in future we will be vetting candidates rigorously at all levels, I promise you that.

‘We haven’t got time, we haven’t got room for a few extremists to wreck the work of a party that now has 80,000 members and rising by hundreds every single day.’

Prior to the evening party, Mr Farage had earlier appeared on the same stage to deliver his keynote conference speech

Speaking to reporters after his keynote speech, Mr Farage admitted that voters ‘punished’ his party at the general election for having ‘bad apples’ among their ranks. 

A week before polling day, Reform’s campaign plunged into meltdown after undercover footage revealed shocking comments by members of Mr Farage’s local team in Clacton.

Filming by an undercover investigator showed Reform figures advocating shooting Channel migrants as ‘target practice’ for Army recruits.

They also said they party would ‘bring back the noose’, branded Rishi Sunak a ‘f****** p***’ and called for Muslims to be ejected from mosques so they can be turned into Wetherspoons pubs.

Mr Farage admitted the final week of the general election campaign was a ‘disaster’ for his party.

It came after Reform had previously been forced to ditch a number of parliamentary candidates over offensive comments.

Mr Farage said: ‘What I have to make sure, we have to make sure is we don’t have a repetition of what happened in the general election.

‘Because the last seven or eight days, it was just a disaster. We had expected to poll 5 per cent more than we did and the electorate punished us.

‘The electorate punished us for having these bad apples in there. So I will do my upmost.

‘We can’t be clearer, if you are a racist bigot, there are other people that you can be attracted to but it’s not us.’