Nigel Farage said Sir Keir Starmer's new government "could soon be in trouble" as he watched an Essex football club's first match with Reform UK's fifth MP.
The leader of the Reform movement, who is also the new MP for Clacton, watched East Thurrock Community Football Club in Corringham on Saturday afternoon with James McMurdock, who won the seat of Basildon South and East Thurrock on Friday.
Mr McMurdock won the seat with a majority of just 98 votes from Labour, securing Reform five seats in the House of Commons.
Mr Farage received a warm welcome at the Wyldecrest Sports Country Club, where he posed for photos with locals, drank a beer and smoked a cigarette outside as he watched the football match.
He met a boy who asked him to say "Brexit means Brexit" so he could record it on a phone, which the Reform UK leader did.
Speaking before the match started, Mr Farage said that "with a few exceptions" the new Cabinet are "the least experienced people ever to serve in a British Cabinet".
Asked for his views on Sir Keir's new Cabinet, Mr Farage said: "With a few exceptions, I think they are the least experienced people ever to have been in a British Cabinet.
"When you really look at their life stories, their backgrounds, and you consider that these are people who are making executive decisions that fundamentally affect people's lives, I think they're going to find it very, very difficult. And I say that because the country is facing some really fundamental problems, I suspect this administration could get into trouble quite quickly."
And when asked to comment on the prime minister's decision to scrap the Rwanda plan, Farage said: "Well, he said he would do it, so at least he kept his promise, I think.
"Look, Rwanda would never work. What Keir Starmer is proposing, which is to tackle the gangs, well, frankly, you know, the previous government did that in recent years, it's not going to work.
"At the moment it's wild and windy, but we've also got some strong first-hand stories that as soon as things calm down, they'll be crossing the English Channel in their thousands. And let's face it, Keir Starmer has no plan to deal with that."
The Reform UK leader said his aim is to "build a mass movement for real change in the run-up to the next election".
He said: "We will do what we can with five seats in parliament. What I will definitely do is to ensure a real opposition in the country.
"And my goal and ambition is to build a mass movement for real change, leading up to the next elections."
Asked how he would sell proportional representation to the public, Mr Farage said: "Well, the fact that for every Reform MP there are 800,000 voters, and for every Labour MP there are 30,000 voters, suggests that there is something very, fundamentally wrong."
He added: "We have five MPs, PR would have given us 97 MPs, but we are where we are."
Asked who he would like to see as leader of the Conservative Party, Mr Farage said: "I don't think it matters who they choose as leader, to be honest. This party is divided in two, they call it a broad church, well, it's a broad church with no common shared religion."
Mr Farage said Reform would do "very, very well" in the Senedd elections and that based on its performance in Scotland at the general election, the party would be "very well on track to win seats in the Scottish Parliament as well".
A local councillor met Mr Farage and told him that he had previously been a councillor for the Conservative Party, that he is now an independent and that he plans to join Reform UK.
Alex Anderson, a Stanford native and a councillor on Thurrock City Council, said after his meeting with Mr Farage that he was elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022, both times as the Conservative Party candidate.
He said there was a "budget disagreement with the Conservative government" a few months ago which meant he "voted against a council tax increase", the party leader was suspended and now sits as an independent.
Mr Anderson said he had spoken to Mr Farage about the general election and how "impressive" it was that Reform got 4.1 million votes.
There are now five Reform UK MPs after Lee Anderson defended Ashfield, while party chairman Richard Tice secured Boston and Skegness and former Southampton FC chairman Rupert Lowe won Great Yarmouth, both at the expense of the Tories.
It comes after Mr Farage made a "100% pledge" to rid Reform UK of "bad apples" when several protesters disrupted an event meant to celebrate the party's election results on Friday afternoon.
He was met with a flood of cheers from protesters in the crowd as he tried to start a speech in central London to mark what the party described as a "political earthquake".
After claiming that the general election had shown there was "absolutely no enthusiasm" for Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party, Farage reiterated his party's ambitions to act as opposition to the new government.
Mr Farage also said he would take "criminal action" against Vetting.Com's Colin Bloom for promising to "professionalise" Reform UK.
When asked about the racism row that has plagued the party, the party leader again blamed the company it had hired to screen candidates.
Mr Farage called Friday's event "full theatre" when he spoke in Essex on Saturday.
He said, "Well, it was real theater, wasn't it? We had protesters, I probably enjoyed it more than they did.
"But no, I mean, look, the only thing I do at press conferences, unlike what Sunak and Starmer have done, is we answer questions from any press organisation, we are not afraid of anything."
Although Reform UK was founded in 2018, Farage has tried to become an MP several times, but without success.
He was a Member of the European Parliament for 20 years and during that time campaigned fiercely for the UK to leave the EU.
