The upcoming general election in Britain will likely see a “very, very low turnout” due to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and opposition Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer being incredibly “boring”, Brexit boss Nigel Farage predicted.
As the two major party leaders laid out their respective visions for the country on Monday, Nigel Farage said that their performances were so uninspiring that he began to “nod off”.
While Mr Farage acknowledged that Sunak had made some “fundamentally important arguments” — with the PM warning that in light of the dangers posed by Communist China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the world is more unstable than at any point since the Cold War and that, conveniently, only he has the ability to confront such issues — the Brexiteer said that the Tory leader lacked “energy, spark, and fizz”.
“Whatever the content of the speech and the riposte that we got from Keir Starmer, I have to say, in terms of delivery, after about 15 to 20 minutes, I was beginning to nod off,” he declared on his GB News primetime programme.
“I can’t imagine we’ve ever had two leaders going head to head for who’s going to be the next prime minister, who are, frankly, so boring,” Farage said, adding: “I think we can predict a very, very low turnout.”
Although both candidates are clearly lacking in the charisma department, this has largely been an advantage for Starmer, with the Labour leader attempting to present his progressive party as moderate and sensible after the socialist extremes of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, who suffered a historic blowout to Boris Johnson in the last election in 2019.
Conversely, in recent special and local elections, there appears to be heavy voter apathy among Conservative Party voters, likely exacerbated by the inability of Sunak — who was installed in Downing Street against the wishes his own party members — to connect with the public.
For now, the nation’s most charismatic political figure, Mr Farage, remains on the sidelines. However, the man who spearheaded the movement to take Britain out of the European Union has said that he will make a decision about his political future in the coming weeks.
The ceremonial president of the populist Reform UK party stepped back from frontline politics in 2020 following the completion of Brexit and has since gone on to host a popular programme on the upstart Fox News-style television network GB News.
Recent polling from JL Partners found that if Mr Farage were to return to the political fray, it could have serious ramifications on the balance of power in the UK. The survey found that at present, the Labour Party is leading the Conservatives by a margin of 45 per cent to 25 per cent, with Reform holding at 10 per cent under current leader Richard Tice.
However, the poll found that if Mr Farage returned to Reform, the party would instantly jump to at least 16 per cent in the polls and take the support for the Tories down to a “wipe-out” level of just 21 per cent.
JL pollster Scarlett Maguire said: “The Conservatives are set for a serious bruising at the next election. But if Nigel Farage came back, it would be a knockout blow… This polling shows it really could be an extinction-level event for the Tories.”
Responding to the poll, Mr Farage said on Monday: “Regardless of what I decide to do next, the Conservatives are toast anyway.”
There have been some suggestions that the Brexit boss may seek to electorally dismantle the Conservatives to such a degree that the party would be forced to allow him to takeover the party and craft it in his image following the election. However, Farage is also apparently weighing other options, including, he claims, a job offer to “indirectly” help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in the United States.