Nigel Farage has hinted that he could join the Conservatives if there was a change of leader and said he would “have a chat” if Boris Johnson called him as he blasted the party for imposing the third lockdown and for overseeing record tax levels and immigration figures. The Telegraph has the story.
The former UKIP leader said there was “not a cat’s chance in hell” of joining the Tories under Rishi Sunak, but left the door open to a possible return to the party he left in 1992.
He said he had not yet decided whether to stand as a candidate at the next General Election but claimed his current party, Reform U.K., is almost neck and neck with the Tories in some areas.
Mr. Farage, who came third on the ITV reality show I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! said the Conservatives are “headed for electoral catastrophe” and “haven’t got a clue what is about to befall them”.
Speaking to the Telegraph from Australia after leaving the jungle, he said: “Would I stand for the Conservative Party at the next election? Under this leadership, not a cat’s chance in hell.
“Would I stand for a party that’s put the tax burden up to the highest level since 1951, whose new legal net migration figures stand at 745,000, which never believed in Brexit but used it purely opportunely to win an election, that locked us down for a third lockdown completely unnecessarily and caused calamitous harm to the mental health of our young, the physical health of our old, and damaged the NHS?”
He did not say under whose leadership he might be prepared to rejoin the Tories, but added: “I’ve got 6,000 messages. If there is one from Boris I’ll find it in a minute and I might give him a ring.
“I don’t know whether Boris has reached out. If Boris has reached out and we really believed that the role of Government was to get out of the way and let men and women set up their businesses and create wealth and do well, then I’ll have a chat with him.
“I think the whole axis of Government has moved towards state controls… but when it comes to politics, never say never.
“I’ve never ever wanted in politics to have a job for a title or a rank or a position. I only joined politics all those years ago to make change. Brexit was a fundamental constitutional change – if I’m going to do it again I would have to believe that I could be the instigator of real change in a country that I think is in some ways almost becoming sclerotic.
“And I don’t see at the minute how I would do that between now and the next General Election.”
If he had a chat with Boris, perhaps he could raise the point that it was Boris who locked down the country (for the third time, and the first two) and it was Boris who opened the floodgates to post-pandemic immigration by loosening the entry requirements. Rejecting the Conservatives under the current leadership and instead looking to Boris would seem to forget who’s been in charge in recent years.
Worth reading in full.
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