Nigel Farage has said there is every chance of a general election in 2027 as the government is falling apart after Angela Rayner’s resignation.

Speaking at the Reform UK party conference in Birmingham, he said the former Rayner’s actions “scream of entitlement” and said the Labour government was even worse than the Tories that went before it.

With Keir Starmer preparing a reshuffle to replace Rayner, the Reform UK leader laid into the “cabinet of people wholly unqualified to run our country”.

Speaking without an Autocue or script, he joked about the CV blunders of the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, before saying the UK was lucky until half an hour ago to have a housing secretary who was a “property developer and speculator”.

Farage said Rayner quitting – not just as housing secretary but elected deputy leader – meant there would be an internal battle in Labour.

He said: “Already they are facing the threat of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana … the left of Labour will rear its voice and we are about to witness a split in Labour too … I think there is every chance now of a general election happening in 2027 and we must be ready.”

The Reform leader said he had brought forward his speech by three hours to address the fact that the government was in crisis. He walked on stage to rock music and fireworks, with a break in the middle of his speech for the former Tory cabinet minister Nadine Dorries to talk about her defection.

She said the government was showing it couldn’t manage the economy and that Labour was “fracturing and dividing into two”.

Dorries said: “We are in deep trouble and you can’t look at either of the two main political parties up till now to save the country.”

Returning to the stage, Farage urged the audience to “make Britain great again” and praised the spread of the St George’s Cross and union flags across lamp-posts, which critics have said have been inflaming tensions and making migrants feel unwelcome.

The Reform leader said every flag placed was a way of “sticking two fingers up at the establishment” and of saying “we have had enough”.

Farage also said a Reform government would “stop the boats” within two weeks of taking office, which Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak’s government have struggled with as a longer term aim.

In a speech ranging in a scattergun way over policy, he also claimed the government was doing everything it could “to crush free speech online”, adding: “We are without a doubt in the most dangerous place the country has been in my lifetime.”

He also talked about schools, saying he wants children to be taught trades and services, adding: “We refuse to have our children’s minds poisoned with a twisted interpretation of history.”

Farage, whose party has led in the polls for six months, finished his speech by announcing that his efficiency chief, Zia Yusuf, the party’s former chair, would be the new head of policy and that Reform would have its own department for preparing for government.