Nigel Farage urges voters to send him to Parliament ‘to be a bloody nuisance’
Nigel Farage accused the Tories of ‘betraying’ voters over Brexit as he kicked off his General Election campaign with a rally in Clacton-on-Sea.
The newly-installed Reform UK leader urged voters in the seaside town where he will fight to become an MP at the eighth attempt on July 4 to ‘send me to Parliament to be a bloody nuisance’.
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He told the crowd of hundreds: ‘I will stand up and fight for you, I will give you my best and I will do what I have done for the last quarter of a century in politics.’
Supporters shouted ‘get ’em Nige’ and ‘we love you Nigel’.
It comes after Mr Farage U-turned on his previous suggestion he would not stand in this General Election, opting to fight in Clacton and being installed as Reform leader in place of Richard Tice.
He told supporters the Tories deserved to be punished for their betrayal over Brexit, saying: ‘We made an offer to the British people, we could get back our independence and control of our borders.
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‘But what has happened? The Conservatives have betrayed that trust. They’ve opened up the borders to mass immigration like we’ve never seen before.
‘And they deserve to pay a price for that, a big price for that.’
Mr Farage said the General Election was already effectively over: ‘That breach of trust from the Conservatives means they are finished, they are done.
‘We are going to get a Labour government. Whether you like it or not, we are going to get a Labour government – the question is, who is going to be the voice of opposition?’
He urged voters to ‘send me to Parliament to be a bloody nuisance’.
‘A Labour government won’t make any real changes at all, we need radical surgery in this country,’ he said.
Mr Farage had previously hinted he could be open to talks with the Tories, but suggested earlier he could not work with them in their current form.
Instead, he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain his goal was to take the Conservative Party over, rather than join it.
‘You can speculate as to what’ll happen in three or four years’ time, all I will tell you is if Reform succeed in the way that I think they can, then a chunk of the Conservative Party will join us – it’s the other way around,’ he said.
He pointed to Canada, where ‘Reform did a reverse takeover of the Conservative Party, rebranded it and Stephen Harper – who was elected as a Reform MP – became the Canadian prime minister for 10 years’.
Mr Farage said: ‘I don’t want to join the Conservative Party, I think the better thing to do would be to take it over.’
His return to the political fray came as Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer prepared for their first televised showdown of the campaign at 9pm on ITV.
The Tories appear on course for a heavy defeat on July 4, according to projections by pollsters, with YouGov suggesting they could be reduced to just 140 seats.
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