Nigel Farage clashed with the BBC’s Mishal Husain over migration in a tense interview this morning.

The Reform UK leader appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme after announcing his sensational return to frontline politics yesterday.

The BBC presenter pressed the Brexit architect on Reform’s pledge to freeze non-essential immigration, asking: “Who do you consider non-essential?”

Mr Farage said: “We simply as a country cannot go on with an exploding population the way that it is.”

Ms Husain went on to list a series of occupations and whether they would be allowed to come to Britain under Reform’s plans.

She asked about midwives, architects and butchers to which Mr Farage replied “in limited numbers” each time.

The BBC host then asked about bakers, prompting him to respond: “This is really getting rather silly isn’t it?”

She went on: “That’s what I’m suggesting, if you think about these occupations there is a large number of different occupations that it appears this country needs.”

Mr Farage said: “Well I tell you what we cannot go on as we are, we have to limited numbers, our quality of life in this country is being diminished by the population explosion.

“And if that means that in some sectors there will be shortages what that then means is wages would go up and we start to encourage people to learn skills rather than heading off to university and doing social sciences.”

Ms Husain said: “If the key thing is the numbers being limited what’s the overall number of people you would be prepared to see come to the UK to work every year.”

Mr Farage replied: “Net migration at zero would be the target. So you’d still have room within the labour market for up to 600,000 people.

“Now hopefully we wouldn’t need that many but it still leaves plenty of room.”

The BBC presenter said: “So 600,000 is an acceptable number of people coming to the UK every year.”

Mr Farage added: “Far too many but if that’s what we need and if it makes you happy that’s what we’ll do.”