He has said that Britain’s ruling Conservative Party is “on the verge of collapse” and that Nigel Farage’s Reform Party could surpass it in votes, and called for a “political rebellion” against the “boring idiots” in power.
Nigel Farage is set to return as leader of the former Brexit party he founded, Reform Britain, and stand in Clacton, the constituency where his former party, UKIP, enjoyed electoral success.
But the Brexit Party leader made clear that rather than seeking to win a single seat in next month’s general election, he has more national, longer-term ambitions and set out his election plan for five years from now. Still, there is still the potential for a major upset in this election, Farage said, apparently encouraged by a major new opinion poll released today showing Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, Britain’s default government for two centuries, is heading for a crushing defeat.
Farage suggested Reform UK could actually surpass the Conservatives in terms of vote tally, saying the party was aiming to win “millions of votes” next month, surpassing the four million it received in 2015. “We will win huge numbers of votes, I think we have a good chance of getting more votes than the Conservatives, I really do… They are on the brink of total collapse and frankly that can’t happen to better people than us,” he said.
“I will be returning as leader of Reform UK, and not just for this election campaign. I will be returning for the next five years.” Nigel Farage#Britainneedsreform pic.twitter.com/EqKes0WHeW
— Reform UK (@reformparty_uk) June 3, 2024
As a Brexit party, Reform UK has significantly outperformed the Conservatives in national elections before, such as winning 5.2 million votes in the 2019 European Parliament elections to the Conservatives’ 1.5 million. But achieving the same result in a Westminster election would be a major feat, as EU elections, when the UK was still in the EU, have long been treated as protest votes in the UK. To be sure, Farage’s candidacy represents a new political reality, and opinion polls have proven unreliable in judging support for him in the past, so it’s unclear whether we can accurately predict whether Reform will make a breakthrough in this election anyway.
But a larger or smaller number of votes is unlikely to translate into seats because Britain’s electoral system favours established, well-funded national parties like Labour and the Conservatives on the one hand, and regionally focused parties like the Scottish nationalists, Greens and Liberals on the other. Still, Farage said he hopes to win votes in this election and then turn them into seats after establishing himself as the de facto opposition to the next government.
He said: “Everybody already knows the Conservative Party will be in opposition. But they are not the opposition. They do not have the capacity to be the opposition. They have spent the better part of the last five years fighting each other, rather than fighting for the interests of this country. … We will be the voice of the opposition. And I will say this: I have done it before, I will do it again, and I am going to surprise everybody.”
Farage said he would have no mercy on the Conservative Party (which may in fact be a right-wing Conservative party, good individuals as they may be, but they have underpinned the worst period of mass immigration in Britain’s history) and called on Britons to turn their backs on a system that no longer works. “What I really want, and what I am trying to lead, is a political rebellion,” he said.
Nigel Farage has announced that he will stand for Parliament for the Clacton constituency in Essex in the general election on 4 July. https://t.co/FgFxQSjner
—Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 3, 2024
“Yes, rebellion. A turn against the political status quo. It’s not working. Nothing is working in this country anymore… It’s declining. It will only turn around if we are bold. It will only turn around with economic growth, and that will only happen if we break away from the half-dozen multinational corporations that dominate the thinking of politicians and allow true entrepreneurial spirit to flourish.”
In a rallying cry against the “boring idiots” in politics, Mr Farage said it was time to “Make Britain Great Again”.
Sky News Latest PollsThe comments, quoted by Farage when he decided to stand today, will make very harsh reading for the Conservative party currently in power. For 14 years the party has pledged to keep the British people under control, yet has actually done the exact opposite. Voters seem to have realised this, and are ready to punish the party, not to mention its other failings, including on the economy and taxation.
The opposition Labour Party is predicted to win a massive 422 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons – the largest majority in modern British political history – leaving the Conservatives with just 140 seats.
.Nigel Farage News – a game changer. Boris Johnson He shot the fox in Farage. He kept an eye on the threat from the right. If Johnson was still leader, Farage wouldn’t have stood because the reformists wouldn’t have had any seats to win. So to all the Conservative MPs who thought that…
— Dame Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorries) June 3, 2024
