A spokesman for the government has called Nigel Farage a “not fit and proper” person who shouldn’t be allowed near government, rebuking in the strongest terms the offer of an electoral pact given by the Brexit leader in recent weeks.
Nigel Farage’s Brexit party comprehensively defeated the Conservatives in the April elections and look set to inflict more damage in the forthcoming general election if Boris Johnson walks back on his promise to deliver Brexit “do or die”, but the Tory leader’s team has rejected the offer of a truce out of hand, throwing in an insult for good measure.
In comments that recall the acrimony during the Brexit campaign when the officially sanctioned Vote Leave campaign led by Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings — now the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and his top advisor respectively — locked out Nigel Farage and his allies, a Downing Street spokesman said “The PM will not be doing a deal with Nigel Farage.”
British newspaper The Guardian reports the rejection and put-down by the unnamed “senior Tory source”, who said of the Brexit leader and Leave.EU’s millionaire donor: “Neither Nigel Farage nor Arron Banks are fit and proper persons and they should never be allowed anywhere near government.”
While Boris Johnson has failed to make progress with Brexit during his leadership so far, going from defeat to defeat in a remain-dominated Parliament, he remains vulnerable to the Brexit party in a snap election.
Mr Johnson has vowed to deliver Brexit “do or die” by the end of October, and if he fails to do so it remains likely the voters will seek to punish him at the polls, as they did in April when the Brexit Party came first in a national election after Theresa May failed to honour the March Brexit date as promised.
Recent special elections have shown the pro-Brexit vote split between the parties, handing results to the Liberal Democrats and Labour parties respectively when a Brexit coalition could have comfortably won.
Mindful of this, Brexit leader Nigel Farage has made an offer of a non-aggression pact to Mr Johnson on several occasions, and today said his price would be an unopposed run at 90 Parliamentary seats in the next election. In return, he would let pro-Brexit Conservatives run unopposed, boosting their chances of being elected.
The idea of such a pact may have some support among the British people. Breitbart London reported on a new opinion poll Wednesday which saw more Britons support the idea of a truce between the Tories and Brexit than opposed it. Meanwhile, a majority of voters said they wanted Brexit delivered, a figure that included a third of people who voted for remain in 2016, and now said they just wanted to get on with it.
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