Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage revealed he would not be standing as a Parliamentary candidate in December’s snap election. Instead, he will be devoting his time to “serve the cause” by supporting his party nominees across Great Britain.
Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning, the veteran Brexit campaigner said that he would begin campaigning on behalf of his political colleagues on Monday.
Mr Farage said that he had contemplated how best to “serve the cause of Brexit”: whether by seeking a parliament seat or “traversing the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, supporting 600 candidates. And I’ve decided the latter course is the right one.”
“I don’t want to be in politics for the rest of my life,” he told the BBC host.
He said that he wanted to explain to the people that what Prime Minister Boris Johnson is selling — his EU-approved withdrawal treaty — “is not Brexit”, but rather a “Remainer’s Brexit”.
“They need to understand that actually what’s on offer is a close linkage to all the European institutions. The next negotiating phase is of at least three years. So I’m going out across the country, starting tomorrow,” the Brexit Party MEP said.
Mr Farage launched his election campaign on Friday, softening his clean-break Brexit stance and again offering an alliance with the Conservative Party.
Asked whether there had been any progress in those talks, Mr Farage said that “conversations have happened over the previous few weeks, but if Boris is determined to stick to this new EU treaty then that is not Brexit”.
“If Boris was going for a genuine Brexit, we wouldn’t need to fight against him in this election,” he added.
Show host Andrew Marr asked the Brexiteer whether running in 600 seats across England, Wales, and Scotland could split the Leave vote and hand Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Brexit Labour Party a victory.
Mr Farage raised a similar scenario from 2015 when he was UKIP leader and running his party against David Cameron’s Conservatives and Ed Miliband’s Labour Party.
“I’ve heard all this before,” Mr Farage said. “I sat here talking to you in 2015 when you asked me would the UKIP involvement mean that Mr Miliband would become prime minister? And what happened on results night? We saw the four million UKIP votes hurt the Labour Party more than it hurt the Conservative Party. It may very well be the same this time around.”
“David Cameron would not have got a majority without the UKIP vote,” he added.
Mr Farage highlighted that Brexit was not a right-wing issue and that his party would be picking up left-wing voters in the Labour heartlands.
“We’re looking at Brexiteers through this centre-right conservative prism, completely forgetting the five million people who voted Brexit [in 2016] and then voted for Jeremy Corbyn in 2017… Those people from those communities are more likely to vote Brexit Party than they are to vote Conservative,” he said.
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