Nigel Farage, the politician who helped champion Britain’s departure from the European Union, will lead the right-wing party Reform UK into the UK general election, the party’s current leader Richard Tice said on Monday.
As he confirmed that he was taking over as leader of Reform UK. Mr Farage said the UK was in “economic decline, social decline, moral decline”. He said he would stand in Clacton, Essex, his eighth attempt to become an MP after seven previous failures while standing for Ukip.
Mr Farage said he intended to “lead a political revolt” and “a turning of our backs on the political status quo”.
He told the audience at a Reform UK event in London: “Nothing in this country works any more. The health service doesn’t work. The roads don’t work. None of our public services are up to scratch... This will only be turned around with boldness.”
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He said: “We’re in economic decline in relative terms. Oh, sure, we’re doing better than our former partners in the European Union. But we’re massively behind America and many other parts of the world. We’re in social decline. And we’re actually in a form of moral decline. We’ve forgotten who we are as a country.”
He added: “That’s what you get when you lead by a career political class... At every level, the centre of gravity on every national debate has moved hugely to the left since 2010, when David Cameron and George Osborne took power. Something is happening out there. There is a rejection of the political class going on in this country, in a way that has not been seen in modern times.”
He said it was thus far “the dullest, most boring election campaign we have ever seen in our lives”, adding: “We think this election needs a bit of gingering up.”
He said Reform UK was targeting more than four million votes, which was the high-water mark for Ukip.
He added that Reform UK would not stand down against Conservative candidates, regardless of their record on Brexit, because they had played a part in what he claimed was a “betrayal” of the British public.
He said that regardless of the outcome of the election, “taxes will remain high” and “our people are getting poorer”.
Though Mr Farage (60), has lost in seven previous attempts to win a parliamentary seat, he still holds considerable sway in British politics. He kept Westminster guessing for months about whether he would stand in the election, but when prime minister Rishi Sunak suddenly called a snap election, the move appeared to take Farage off guard. He said the timing was not right and that in any case, he was more focused on helping Donald Trump return to the White House in the fall.
Since then, the Tories have tried to take advantage of Farage’s absence by seeking to win back voters from Reform, including by promising to bring back national service for teenagers, a tax guarantee for pensioners and a plan to rewrite the Equality Act to change the definition of “sex” to “biological sex”.
But the polls have not budged and Farage’s delayed entry is a major setback. Polling from Survation in January found that the Conservatives would beat Labour into second place in Clacton, with Reform placing third. But when asked the same question and presented with Mr Farage as the Reform UK candidate, voters there said they’d elect him as their member of parliament, beating the Conservative incumbent, Giles Watling, into second.
Farage made clear he is also targeting Labour, though he said Starmer’s party would claim victory on July 4th. “Keir Starmer – yes he’ll win, but we’re absolutely going to make sure that his percentage is a lot smaller than it is now,” he added. – Reuters, Guardian