Farage set to back new party
Feb 1st update: The Brexit Party’s official founder Catherine Blaiklock (interviewed by the Daily Telegraph’s Christopher Hope) claims that the party already has more than 200 potential candidates lined up – including Nigel Farage – in the event of a delayed Brexit causing either UK involvement in European elections or a snap general election this year. We should bear in mind that it is easier to talk about election plans than to deliver them.
Following his long-expected resignation from UKIP – the party he led for nine years including its greatest successes at the 2009 and 2014 European elections and the 2015 General Election – Nigel Farage gave the first indication yesterday that he is planning to endorse a new breakaway party.
During an interview with the Sun on Sunday, Farage said:
“There is huge demand for a party that’s got real clarity on this issue. You can see and hear the frustration welling up out there. It’s clear the political elite want to stop Brexit in its tracks and the prime minister doesn’t have the strength or inclination to see this through.
“…If the government goes back on its word and betrays the millions of people who voted for Brexit then we need a party prepared to stand up and fight for it. I’m fully prepared for article 50 to be extended or revoked and if that happens, I will re-enter the fray.”
Rather than backing any of the existing post-UKIP parties, Farage said he is likely to support one that is presently being registered by UKIP’s former economics spokesman Catherine Blaiklock, who wrote for the Salisbury Review before Christmas explaining her conclusion that “UKIP is dead”.
Ms Blaiklock began the process of registering this party with the Electoral Commission on January 11th, which leaves very little time to complete the process if we were to face a snap general election, or if delays to Brexit entail our involvement in the European Parliamentary elections on May 23rd.
It had been assumed that UK MEPs, including Farage himself, would have left by then and their seats would be redistributed among the EU’s remaining member states. But as with so much about the Brexit process, even this is now uncertain.
Farage has indicated he would be prepared to stand again in May, and might also be tempted to stand in a likely parliamentary by-election in Peterborough, which will occur if Labour MP Fiona Onasanya fails to overturn her conviction for lying about a traffic offence.
UKIP’s activists and donors would then be left with a dilemma: should they follow their old leader; stick with their new leader; or opt for one of the three other main alternatives offered by leading figures who have quit UKIP during the past year or two – Anne Marie Waters’ anti-Islamic For Britain Movement; the Democrats and Veterans Party led by John Rees-Evans; or the Social Democratic Party endorsed by MEP and former Express journalist Patrick O’Flynn.
For Britain was recently accepted as an affiliate of the Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom, which includes Marine Le Pen’s ‘National Rally’ (RN), formerly the National Front; the Austrian Freedom Party; the Flemish Vlaams Belang; and the Italian anti-immigration party Lega headed by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini.
[…] In a substantial article in the Sunday Times magazine today, Matthew Goodwin, the author of a recent book on the rise of national populism, dissects the recent factional spats within the UKIP orbit as the party itself, under another new leader, Gerard Batten, embraces the likes of ‘Tommy Robinson’ and the wider counter-jihad movement, while the former leader, Nigel Farage, prepares to launch a new party. […]