A poll has revealed that a significant majority of both Conservative and Brexit Party voters back a Leave alliance.
A poll by YouGov released on Thursday revealed that 70 per cent of Conservative voters and 81 per cent of those who back Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party support the two parties agreeing on a pact for the December 12th election. Just eight and six per cent respectively are opposed.
Such a pact would involve each party standing down and endorsing the other in specific seats in order to avoid splitting the Breit vote and handing constituencies to Remain-backing candidates.
The poll was conducted after Mr Farage said that he would contest every seat in Great Britain unless Prime Minister Boris Johnson dropped his withdrawal treaty with the EU, which the Brexit Party leader says “is not Brexit”.
The YouGov survey found that in the event of a pact, a Brexit Party candidate running unopposed and endorsed by the Conservatives could receive 62 per cent of the votes from people would who otherwise vote Tory.
In the opposite circumstances, 72 per cent of Farage voters would back an unopposed Conservative if endorsed by the Brexit Party.
In the case of a post-election coalition — should there be a hung parliament without one party having an overall majority — Tories were most happy with the prospect of partnering in government with the Brexit Party (69 per cent), followed by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) at 30 per cent.
Campaigning in south Wales on Friday, Mr Farage said he would try “for a few more days” to agree on a pact with Johnson’s Conservatives.
“I’m going to go on trying for a few more days and make the point that in Torfaen, and other constituencies here in south Wales, the Conservatives haven’t won for a hundred years,” he said.
“And they’re not going to win here on 12 December; there is no chance of them winning.
“So I would make this urgent plea to Boris Johnson and others — don’t split the Brexit Party vote here in south Wales.
“We are the challengers here in south Wales, and if you’re not in the field, we will beat Labour in many of these constituencies.”
“If that Leave alliance was put to the country it would win a very big majority,” he added.
Mr Farage has offered an alliance with the Tories. Still, Number 10 brutally rebuffed him in September, with a spokesman calling the veteran Leave campaigner not a “fit and proper” person to be allowed near government — although he has insisted he is not seeking a government office, and in fact is not even standing for Parliament himself.
Despite the intransigence of the Tory leadership, however, Farage is reportedly in talks with Tory MPs to agree to individual pacts.
The Brexit Party leader has warned that “Boris’s ‘Great New Deal’ is 95 per cent the same as Mrs May’s ‘Bad Old Treaty,’” and has challenged Mr Johnson to an election debate.
“If you really believe that this is a great new deal, or as you said in the last couple of days a fantastic deal, if you are really trying to tell the British public this gets Brexit done, let’s have a civilised head-to-head debate on what this EU treaty means and I’d be only too happy to stand with Boris to talk this through,” Mr Farage said on Friday.
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