Nigel Farage has predicted an 'electoral earthquake' in next month's local elections with Labour's traditional red wall seats falling in droves to Reform UK.

The Reform UK leader says his party will take even more seats in Labour's heartland territory than Boris Johnson famously did in 2019 when the Conservatives seized key Labour strongholds across the North and in the Midlands.

Mr Farage also vowed to reverse Sir Keir Starmer's Brexit reset plans to bring the UK back in line with Europe seeing them as a betrayal of Brexit and said he believed the Prime Minister would be toppled 'by midsummer' because he 'lied to the public' over Lord Mandelson.

'What we're reaching into here is something that certainly Boris Johnson couldn't, even in 2019. If I'm right this is of a whole different magnitude. It is an electoral earthquake for two reasons,' he said. 'One, Labour is dying in the heartlands. And two, the Conservative Party is ceasing to be a national party.'

But while he is confident that May 7 will be a hugely successful night for Reform, which is expected to finish second in Wales and Scotland with the Labour vote plummeting, Mr Farage, who also did not rule out a future alliance with the Conservatives, said it is 'wildly optimistic' to expect his party to win as many as 2000 seats as some experts have forecast.

'We're tapping into patriotic old Labour. We're tapping into Brexit-y old Labour. We're tapping into areas where community still means a huge amount to these people. Where family may be more fractured than it used to be.

'And the commonest thing people will say is, 'We've always been Labour but not any more' ... and these are people, as I say, they've been tempted before. Ukip was tempting. The Brexit Party was tempting. Quite a few in 2019 were tempting. But this suddenly feels to me like it's clicking.'

He also slammed Sir Keir Starmer's plans to use a Brexit reset bill in the King's Speech next month to automatically align Britain with European regulations in areas including food standards and decarbonisation and criticised his youth mobility scheme.

And he said public opinion would change 'once they hear the facts, opinion changes quickly. We have to [diverge]. It's a matter of economic necessity'.

The Reform UK leader went on to claim that youth mobility was 'an open door to illegal immigrants who have never been regularised in Spain' and that dynamic alignment with the EU is the 'worst of the lot' adding that there were two here were two points to Brexit: one was getting control of our borders, the second was becoming more competitive.  

He also addressed his friendship with US President Donald Trump which some have suggested is his Achilles heel, insisting the 'relationship with the US really matters' and doubling down on his belief that the UK should have supported the US 'from the start' in the Iran war.

'I count friends as friends, even when I fall out and disagree with them,' he said in an exclusive interview with today's Times, but he stressed that he would have no hesitation in telling Trump the war should end 'as soon as possible' if he spoke to him today.

Mr Farage added that he has a 'long list of areas' where he felt the US Presidents position and Britain's are different but that as allies and 'like families' we can have these differences without fundamentally fracturing our relationship.   

He stressed that it's Britain's relationship with America that 'really matters' and that 'whatever we think about Trump in the short-term is not the point'. 

And he denied that Reform's key battleground migration was no longer as important to voters saying 'the massive population increase' has had a 'knock on effect' on people's lives in many areas.

He is also confident of winning the 'mum' vote and appealing to women and girls, many of whom have been left in fear by horror stories of migrants' medieval attitudes towards women.

'We're letting in people from countries that have very different cultures, attitudes towards women and girls that are completely different.'