Nigel Farage, a pro-Brexit campaigner and serial disruptor of British politics, announced his intention to stand as a candidate in next month’s British general election on Monday, dealing a further setback to the prospects of the country’s Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.
The surprise announcement by Mr Farage, who represents a far-right insurgent movement campaigning to curb immigration, threatens to upend the campaign by taking away votes from Britain’s ruling Conservative Party. In doing so, he could make it even more difficult for Mr Sunak and his party to close the double-digit poll gap with the opposition Labor Party.
Divinatory, charismatic and renowned for his communication skills, Mr Farage was one of the architects of Brexit, supported by a slim majority of Britons in the 2016 referendum. Some analysts believe Mr Farage’s earlier decision not to Failure to run this year has sapped momentum from his party, Reform UK, successor to the Brexit party he once led.
Mr Farage said last month he would not run for a parliamentary seat because he wanted to prioritize supporting Donald J. Trump’s election campaign in the United States. Mr Farage is a long-time ally of the former president and campaigned for him in 2016 and 2020.
But on Monday, Mr Farage reversed his decision, saying he would take charge of Reform UK for the next five years and run for a seat in Parliament.
“I changed my mind, it’s allowed, you know,” he said. “I’m going to run in this election.” He added that he would stand in Clacton, a seaside area where support for Brexit is strong.
The announcement comes on the eve of one of the most important events of the British election campaign so far: a televised debate on Tuesday evening between Mr Sunak and Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labor Party.
Mr Sunak is already under significant pressure, with his Conservative Party well behind in opinion polls and after a gaffe-prone start to the campaign.
Mr Farage’s U-turn could worsen the Prime Minister’s prospects as Reform UK threatens to take a significant number of votes from the Conservatives, analysts say. So far, much of Mr Sunak’s election strategy appeared to have been geared towards winning back Reform UK’s potential supporters, motivating its core right-wing voters to defect to the party and thereby avoiding a major defeat.
But on Monday, Mr Farage claimed the Conservatives were destined to be swept away by a wave of contempt for the political establishment and were “on the brink of total collapse”.
Despite Mr Farage’s profile and popularity on the right of British politics, electoral success in Clacton, where he plans to run, is not guaranteed. He was never elected to the British Parliament at Westminster despite seven previous attempts, although he was a member of the European Parliament for two decades before Britain left the European Union.
Under Britain’s winner-take-all electoral system, candidates from smaller parties struggle to secure the largest share of votes in the region they seek to represent.
Nonetheless, Mr Farage appears to have calculated that he had a chance of victory in Clacton, a staunchly pro-Brexit town about 80 miles northeast of London. It was once represented by an MP from the UK Independence Party, which Mr Farage also led and which campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union.
With the Conservatives trailing in opinion polls, Mr Farage is increasingly predicting a major defeat for Mr Sunak’s party, even speculating that it could be of the magnitude of that suffered by the Progressive Conservatives of Canada in 1993.
In an interview with London’s Sunday Times this weekend, Mr Farage said he had named his party Reform UK in homage to the Canadian insurgent party of the same name.
“It took them a long time, it took them two elections, for them to become the largest center-right party. They then absorbed what was left of the Conservative Party and changed their name,” he said.
Asked if he was suggesting a merger between Reform UK and the Conservatives, Mr Farage replied: “More like a takeover, my dear boy.”
Mr Farage has admirers on the right of the Conservative Party, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former minister who even called for Mr Farage to be invited to stand as a Conservative MP.
Since 2016, Mr Farage has expressed support for Mr Trump, and last week he described the convictions against him on 34 charges as a “disgrace”.
In the 2019 general election, the Brexit Party did not field candidates in many parliamentary constituencies. This was to help Boris Johnson, a former leader of the Conservative Party, whose election promise was to “get Brexit done” and who won a big election victory.
But Richard Tice, leader of Britain’s Reform Party until Mr Farage replaced him on Monday, said the deal would not be repeated and vowed to fight the Conservatives in England, Scotland and Wales.
News Source : www.nytimes.com
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