Farage Says This Election About Establishing ‘Bridgehead’ in Parliament to Make me Prime Minister in 2029

The campaign to knock out the Conservative Party from contention and get representation in Britain’s Parliament at this snap election is to capture a “bridgehead” and prepare for a campaign to take over the British government, Nigel Farage has said.

The ambition for Nigel Farage, now trending towards polling as the most popular right-wing leader in British politics, is “yes, absolutely” to challenge for the leadership of the country at the time of the next national election, which would be at the latest in 2029, he said. The assertion was in response to a very direct question by state broadcaster the BBC on Monday morning, and it prompted Mr Farage to note the very real difficulties the basically impossible position the Conservatives are now in to pitch to lead the country now the utter divorce between the political desires of their voters and the political intentions of their parliamentarians has been revealed.

Farage said: “I think the disconnect between the Labour and Conservative Westminster-based parties and the country, the thoughts, hopes, and aspirations of ordinary people are so far apart from where our politics is. And the funny thing is they show no signs of changing.”

There is “no real fundamental difference” between Labour and the Conservatives, Farage reflected, saying Reform UK was now “aiming to be a big party… that’s our ambition and we believe it’s achievable”.

Despite an attempted gotcha-moment in the interview with Farage over his friendship with former U.S. President Donald Trump, the BBC nevertheless conceded Farage was set to lead the “centre-right coalition” in British politics, a major departure from their usual position of implying extremist views of the Brexiteer.

By electing Reform UK MPs, Farage said, he would be given the “voice of opposition”. In contrast to the Conservatives who he said had been “incapable” of agreeing with each other in government and would be worse once the post-election defeat recriminations began, his party at least knows “what we stand for”. He told the BBC: “We know what we believe in, and for democracy to function properly there needs to be a proper voice of opposition. And our plan, and this is our first big election as a party, our plan is to establish that bridgehead in Parliament, and to use that voice to build a big national campaigning movement around the country over the course of the next five years for genuine change.”

The United Kingdom is a little more than two weeks away from the General Election to decide the composition of its next Parliament. A snap election called by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — although why he decided on this apparently suicidal course has yet to be adequately explained by anyone — has seen his party polling for the Conservatives sink lower and lower in the past three weeks.

An aggregate of polls from the weekend puts support for the Conservatives at the lowest level ever — significant blow to a party that has existed two centuries in its present guise and has Tory roots two centuries further back than that — and a poll last week even put Farage’s Reform UK ahead of the Conservatives for the first time last week. Speaking at the weekend, Mr Farage questioned what the actual point of the Conservative Party now is, given its long-standing position of being a ‘broad church’ taking in the whole right has now been utterly destroyed by Brexit and population explosion.

Reform UK is launching it’s ‘contract’ on Monday. In British electoral tradition parties publish manifestos at election time, a short party platform document outlining their promises for government should they be elected. Farage says his force is refusing to call theirs a manifesto given the strong word association in the mind of the British voter he says he exists, between ‘manifesto’ and ‘lie’.