Nigel Farage has again called on the Conservative Party to agree an election pact with his Brexit Party, warning that if the Tories refuse, they will be responsible for “saddling the country with a Corbyn administration”.
The comments were in reference to remarks made at a Telegraph event on Wednesday night by leading Conservative Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, who said that while he respected Nigel Farage as a “very distinguished political figure and important to what has happened in this country”, Brexiteers who left the Conservatives to join the Brexit Party should return, saying that a vote for Farage’s party would be “a vote effectively for Jeremy Corbyn”.
“What do the Brexit Party want? One thing and that is Brexit. We now have a Conservative leader who shares their attachment to their importance of that one issue,” Mr Rees-Mogg said.
He continued: “I absolutely know Conservative activists that voted for the Brexit Party in swathes in the May election. Seventy-two per cent of Conservative voters voted for the Brexit Party. Why? Because they felt let down and we hadn’t delivered Brexit. That’s why we must deliver Brexit.”
Mr Farage wrote in The Telegraph on Thursday night that the assertion a vote for the Brexit Party was a vote for Labour was “nonsense”, adding: “…Rees-Mogg is merely echoing what a lot of Tories are saying at the moment: that Britain is going to leave the EU on October 31 and there is nothing to worry about”.
“I find this optimism premature,” he said, referencing other instances on which the Tories have made pledges on which they failed to deliver, and voiced his objections to the Tory Party’s continuing pursuit of an exit treaty with the EU which would keep the United Kingdom subject to Brussels throughout a transition period and which would be used as a basis for any future “relationship” with the bloc.
“As for his idea that voting for the Brexit Party will hand the keys of No 10 to Corbyn, let’s examine some facts. There are 5 million Labour supporters who voted for Brexit. Many live in parts of the North of England and in South Wales which will never, ever vote Tory,” Mr Farage explained, his statment supported by a study released that week that found that Labour Leave voters would defect to the Brexit Party rather than to the Tories.
Maintaining that he held Mr Rees-Mogg in high regard, the Brexit Party leader urged him “to impress upon Boris Johnson and his party that if the Tories don’t form a pact with the Brexit Party at the next election, it is they who will be saddling the country with a Corbyn administration”.
The remarks came after Mr Farage’s several public requests for an election pact were met with a response from Downing Street saying the Brexiteer was not a “fit and proper person” who “should never be allowed anywhere near government”. While officially that has been the response from the Conservative Party government, a number of Tory backbenchers have already held informal discussions with the party while chairman of the influential European Research Group (ERG) Steve Baker has called for a pact in order to beat the “Remain coalition”.
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