With the U.K. general election scheduled for December 12, many wondered if Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage himself would stand as one of the insurgent group’s 600 or so parliamentary candidates for a seat in the House of Commons.
Farage, the skilled orator who is an elected member of the mostly ceremonial European parliament, has seven times tried and failed to get elected to the U.K. parliament, the last time narrowly after some apparent shenanigans by the Conservative Party to keep his strong, pro-Brexit voice out of Commons. Last June, the Brexit Party fell just 683 seats short in special parliamentary election won by the Labor Party with just 31 percent, an outcome that is still under police investigation for possible voter fraud.
Nigel Farage announced this morning on the Andrew Marr Show that his energy is better devoted to campaigning for Brexit Party candidates all across the U.K. rather than concentrating on one constituency. Thus, serving the clean-break Brexit objective best means he won’t seek a seat himself. Marr, who considerably toned down his usual rude interruptions, perhaps because of Farage’s past criticism of BBC bias, did raise the conventional wisdom that the Brexit Party could hurt the Leave cause.
Many Conservative politicians and Euroskeptic media pundits (possibly equivalent to RINOs in the U.S.) have accused Farage of jeopardizing Brexit because of the prospects of splitting the pro-Brexit vote on December 12, thereby electing the Marist, anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn of the Labor Party as Prime Minister.
Farage once again insisted that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is championing Brexit in Name Only 2.0, an agreement similar to Theresa May’s failed treaty that prevents the U.K. from becoming a self-governing nation once again and instead stuck in a open-ended transition period that depends upon the European Union to uncharacteristically negotiate in good faith.
He reaffirmed his offer of an Conservative-Brexit Party Leave Alliance if Johnson would drop what he called a “Remainer’s Brexit” and instead go for a genuine Brexit that would take the U.K. out of the customs union, the common market and free of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice once and for all. Johnson has so far rejected the overtures.
Farage also recalled that UKIP, his former party, actually helped the Conservatives in the 2015 election by taking votes away from Labor, contrary to what virtually all the pundits — who were superficially looking through a left-right prism — expected.
As the election gets closer, expect the Conservatives to publicly increase the pressure on Farage, while at the same time, informal alliances between Conservative and Brexit Party candidates in certain constituencies may occur.
Watch the interview below:
Brexit Party chairman Richard Tice fielded some tough questions on London’s LBC Radio this morning from both the callers and argumentative host Ian Dale, who seems very much on board with BRINO 2.0.
He added that BXP won’t nominate any candidates in Northern Ireland based on its support of the solidly pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party there.
