Nigel Farage says he will not stand in UK general
election
Blow to Reform as Farage says he needs to be free to
focus on helping Donald Trump’s election campaign
Kiran
Stacey, Jessica Elgot and Ben Quinn
Thu 23 May
2024 11.26 CEST
Nigel
Farage has said he will not stand in the UK general election, dealing a blow to
his Reform party on the first day of its election campaign.
Farage
announced on Thursday he would not stand for the party he once led, putting an
end to weeks of speculation that he would make an eighth attempt to enter
parliament.
The former
Ukip leader made his announcement on X hours before the Reform leader, Richard
Tice, launched the party’s general election campaign at a press conference in
London.
Farage
tweeted: “I have thought long and hard as to whether I should stand in the
upcoming general election. As honorary president of Reform UK I am fully
supportive of Richard Tice’s leadership and urge voters to put their trust in
him and Lee Anderson [the party’s sole MP]. I will do my bit to help in the
campaign, but it is not the right time for me to go further than that.”
He added
that he wanted to be free to campaign in the US presidential election later
this year. “Important though the general election is, the contest in the United
States of America on November 5 has huge global significance.”
Farage is
the most popular politician in the UK, according to YouGov, and many in Reform
had hoped he would turbocharge their campaign and sap further votes from the
Conservatives by running for a seat.
A poll by
Savanta on Thursday showed he is especially popular among Tory voters, with
about a third of them saying they were disappointed he was not running. Polling
by YouGov for the Progressive Policy Institute, meanwhile, shows Reform has
doubled its vote share among working-class Britons from 7 points in 2019 to 14
points now.
One Reform
activist said: “He’s basically kept people waiting for ages and now it just
looks like he’s hedging his bets for the future.”
One of the
party’s candidates said: “Who knows what his true motivation is? All I know is
that if Reform UK are to become a proper long-term force in UK politics, we
can’t be dependent on the charisma of one man.”
Tice
brushed off any suggestion he might be disappointed by Farage’s decision,
telling reporters at his campaign launch: “Nigel never said he was going to
stand. I’m delighted that he’s able to help us campaign over the next six
weeks. That’s the first time he’s been able to do that, [I’m] thrilled about
that.”
Tice also
confirmed Farage would stand aside from presenting his GB News show during the
campaign.
On Thursday
evening Farage, appearing on GB News as a guest during his usual show slot,
said he had been preparing to launch a campaign next week to stand as an MP
before Sunak announced the general election date.
“I wonder
whether the Conservative party found out about it. I think the sense of panic
that we saw yesterday, the badly prepared speech, might perhaps have prompted
it a little bit.”
Asked to
clarify that he was referring to launching a campaign to stand as an MP, he
confirmed, saying: “Yes, absolutely.”
Tice said
on Thursday that Reform was planning to run in 630 seats across England,
Scotland and Wales, and it is now vetting about 130 candidates to make sure it
can do so.
The party
has had problems with its candidates in the past, having dropped several,
mainly for espousing extreme views online. Tice said the party had improved its
vetting processes but predicted there would still be further issues.
“Vetting is
like an MOT,” he said. “If you’ve got a car, an MOT is valid the day it works.
But you know, if you have a crash the following day, it’s no longer valid for
the MOT.”
Reform is
ultimately owned by Farage but electoral and corporate filings show it has been
mainly bankrolled by Tice, who has contributed about 80% of its declared
funding in loans and donations since he took over in 2021.
Tice told
an audience this month that it would not be easy to run an effective ground
campaign, saying Reform was spending “less than £1.5m a year”, compared with
the £35m allowed for each party nationally and likely to be spent by the
Conservatives and Labour in the year up to the election.
Tice said
he has so far picked about 450 candidates for the general election. Reform
managed to contest only 323 seats in the most recent council elections.
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