Farage election latest: Reform leader to lead 'political revolt' and stand to be MP

Nigel Farage has described Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer as 'boring idiots', and saids he wants to 'make Britain great again'.

Having previously ruled himself out as a candidate due to the "very short notice" of the 4 July vote, Nigel Farage on Monday revealed he had changed his mind and was now standing to be the MP for Clacton.

On 23 May, Farage said he would focus on getting Donald Trump re-elected as US president rather than stand as a Reform candidate in the UK general election.

But speaking on Monday, the new Reform party leader said he would be “back for the next five years” as he sought to put pressure on the prime minister.

Read the full story from Yahoo News.

Nigel Farage may have stood – and failed – seven times to gain election as an MP, but he has nevertheless been one of the most influential British politicians of the post-war era.

Reform UK’s highest-profile figure initially said he was not standing in July’s general election and would instead focus on Donald Trump’s second run at the White House in the US election in November, but in a U-turn on Monday he announced he would stand to be an MP for the eighth time.

Read the full story from PA.

The Tories said Nigel Farage is “doing exactly what Keir Starmer wants him to do” by entering the general Election fray.

A Conservative Party spokesman said: “Nigel Farage risks handing Keir Starmer a blank cheque to rejoin the EU, impose the retirement tax on pensioners and hike taxes on hardworking Brits up and down the UK.

“Farage knows that Reform won’t win any seats, but he doesn’t seem to care that a vote for Reform only helps Labour. He’s doing exactly what Keir Starmer wants him to do.

“Just yesterday, EU insiders openly voiced their expectation that Starmer would seek a softer Brexit deal, opening the door to rejoining the EU all together. That would mean uncontrolled immigration and betraying the will of the British people.

“Is Farage really willing to risk undoing his life’s work by handing Starmer a blank cheque to rejoin the EU?

“Only a vote for Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives can deliver a clear plan, bold action and a secure future for our country.”

Nigel Farage was asked whether the Reform candidate in Clacton was just finding out that he would not be running for the seat.

“He knew six months ago that it really was a possibility. Sometimes tough things have to be done," he responded.

Nigel Farage said there is “every chance” Reform UK get more votes than the Tories in the General Election.

At a press conference, he said: “I genuinely believe we can get more votes in this election than the Conservative Party. They are on the verge of total collapse.”

Asked whether he has boosted Sir Keir Starmer’s chances by running for parliament, the new Reform leader said: “No, is the answer.”

He added that in a week’s time, “I think you’ll see we’re going to start drawing from Labour equally as much as the Conservatives.

“The Conservative Party have lost this election without my intervention.”

Nigel Farage appeared to claim that “massively irresponsible immigration policies” have caused “the birth of sectarian politics in our country”.

The new Reform UK leader said: “We’re worried and we’re fearful of many of the impacts that we’ve seen. We find what happened after those local elections just a few weeks ago, of candidates winning in Leeds, in Burnley, in Bradford and elsewhere, standing shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’, standing shouting ‘we are coming to get you’.

“The birth of sectarian politics in our country caused by massively irresponsible immigration policies. And it was the Labour Party that opened the door and who would have believed that a Conservative Party would have accelerated it.”

Nigel Farage said he wanted to lead a “political revolt”.

"Yes, a revolt. A turning of our backs on the political status quo. It doesn’t work. Nothing in this country works any more," he said.

Farage predicted the Tories will be in opposition after the general election as he took the fight to Rishi Sunak’s party.

He told the press conference: “They are split down the middle on policy, and frankly right now they don’t stand for a damn thing.

“So our aim in this election is to get many, many millions of votes. And I’m talking far more votes than Ukip can got back in 2015.”

He continued: “When people start to realise in the red wall, with Reform second to Labour, when they start to realise that actually in those seats, it’s a Conservative vote that’s a vote for Labour, it’s a Conservative vote that is a wasted vote, then I think we might just surprise everybody.”

He added: “We are appealing to Conservative voters, we are appealing to Labour voters.”

Nigel Farage said there is a “rejection of the political class going on in this country”.

He said he had been left too little time to prepare when Rishi Sunak called a surprise election and had decided the “rational thing to do” was to “do my bit as I put it supporting the country around the party”.

But he said since then he had been talking to people on the streets and observed that “there is a rejection of the political class going on in this country in a way that has not been seen in modern times”.

Farage said: “The other thing that really shook me in a way last week were the number of people coming up to me in the street saying ‘Nigel, why aren’t you standing?'”

Nigel Farage has announced he is standing for election in Clacton, Essex.

Farage said that he had changed his mind about running as an MP after being approached by people on the street who were asking him why he was not standing.

"They felt I was letting them down, that i wasn't standing up for these people - people in their millions," he said. "I guess I have been a champion for many of those people."

NIgel Farage said that the upcoming election was already sewn up, telling the assembled press: "Labour have won the election – there is no contest."

Nigel Farage, speaking after it was announced he had become the leader of Reform UK, said: “We think this election needs a bit of gingering up. Thus far it is the dullest and most boring election campaigns we have seen in our lives.”

Nigel Farage will make his 'emergency announcement' at 4pm.

Nigel Farage's upcoming 'emergency announcement' - perceived by many as likely to be an election declaration - comes after he pledged he would not be running in the June election.

If Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage have one thing in common, beyond Brexit, it must surely be their policy on cake: “pro-having it, and pro-eating it”, in the ex-prime minister’s famous formulation, writes Henry CH Hill for The Telegraph.

How else to describe Farage’s conduct over the past couple of weeks? Since Rishi Sunak called the general election, he has simultaneously ruled himself out of standing as a candidate whilst trying to insert himself into the campaign at every opportunity.

Read the full story from The Telegraph.

There is an old saying in the former mining town of Barnsley, South Yorkshire: “You could write ‘Labour’ on the side of a pig and people would still vote for it.”

The candidates running here for Sir Keir Starmer’s party in the upcoming general election are slightly more articulate than that porcine alternative, yet the point stands. For more than a century, this has been a Labour-dominated town, so it will take an almighty shift for anything to change that.

But Reform UK – the upstart party headed by Richard Tice in name and Nigel Farage in spirit – are confident of mounting a successful challenge here, perhaps more than anywhere else in the country.

Read the full story from the Telegraph here

Reform UK is on course to cost the Conservatives dearly at the general election taking place on July 4 as the party refuses to stand down its candidates to help Rishi Sunak.

Richard Tice’s insurgent Right-of-centre party is characterised by their desire to have “difficult conversations” about the future of the UK, announcing plans to introduce a migrant tax on May 30 to curb mass immigration.

Reform has pledged a 20 per cent National Insurance rate on foreign employees in comparison to the 13.8 figure for British workers, forcing employers to recruit domestically over cheaper foreign staff.

Read the full story from the Telegraph here

Every leader has their signature anthem. D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better was the soundtrack to Tony Blair’s election campaign in 1997, while Theresa May unforgettably jigged out to ABBA’s Dancing Queen at the Tory party conference in 2018.

But what is the soundtrack to Nigel Farage and Reform UK’s campaign to “make Britain great”?

Residents of Ashfield in the East Midlands were rudely awoken on Saturday morning by the sound of club anthems blasting from an open top bus. Riding on the top deck was Farage himself, who was out campaigning with Lee Anderson, the former Labour-turned-Tory-turned-Reform UK MP who is now candidate for Ashfield.

Read the full story from the Evening Standard here

Reform UK was founded by former Ukip leader Nigel Farage as the Brexit Party in 2018, with many of Ukip's former members becoming members. The party, which advocated hard-line euroscepticism and a no-deal Brexit, was re-registered as Reform UK in January 2021.

That same year, Farage stepped down and was replaced by party chairman Richard Tice, who is still leader now. Reform's name was tweaked to Reform UK: The Brexit Party in November 2023.

Reform's slogan, "Let's Make Britain Great", suggests parallels to Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again".

On its website, the party says: "To succeed, we need to do Brexit properly. We must grow our way out of the crisis, we cannot tax our way out of it. We must stand up for our core democratic values, our civil liberties, our right to free speech.

"Let’s celebrate our pride in being British: our amazing culture, our unbreakable communities, our incredible heritage. Let’s stop all the woke nonsense that is holding us back.

"Let’s have a proper immigration policy that works for our country and protects our borders. Together, let’s make great things happen."

How much of a threat Reform UK will be to the Tories remains to be seen, but Lee Anderson, former MP for Ashfield has already defected from the Conservative Party after having the Tory whip suspended over comments he made about "Islamists" taking control of London.

Read the full story from Yahoo News here

Nigel Farage has seen a fair amount of drama during his long career in politics, including a light aircraft accident that nearly cost him his life.

On the day of the 2010 election, Farage was standing as a Ukip candidate, was flying in a small plane which crashed after a party banner became entangled in the plane's tail fin.

Last year as he appeared on ITV's “I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!”, Farage opened up to campmates about the near-fatal accident.

”I don’t recall being unconscious, but I do recall the explosion, the plane flipping over, being stuck in there, everything broken… every rib front and back, split sternum, punctured lung… it was bad," he said.

Farage said he discharged himself from hospital because he “got bored”, adding: "When bad things happen to you in life you’ve got to make a decision. Have I been unlucky, have I been lucky?"

Read the story in full from Yahoo News here

With Nigel Farage appearing on “I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!” late last year, we asked Yahoo UK readers if his presence on the popular ITV show has changed their opinion of the controversial politician.

As the former UKIP and Brexit Party leader said himself in his introduction to the show last month: “I’m a hero to some people and an absolute villain to millions.”

The first of our two polls certainly corresponded with that view.

Read the full story from Yahoo News here

While pollsters do not currently expect Reform UK to win any seats at the upcoming general election, that doesn't mean Rishi Sunak should have no cause for concern at all.

Speaking to Yahoo News last week, experts said a more credible threat to the Tories is Reform UK splitting the vote and effectively handing over some seats to the Labour Party.

They said that while Ukip – Nigel Farage's former party – were able to take votes from both Labour and the Conservatives, Reform UK are mainly attracting voters of the latter party, researchers said.

"We had Reform UK taking 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote-share, that obviously could be a factor in many of the seats where the Conservatives have smaller majorities," said Emma Levin, associate director at polling and market research company Savanta.

"Even a few thousand votes going to Reform could cost them seats."

Read the full story from Yahoo News here

Asked if he fears the possibility of Nigel Farage standing in the election, Rishi Sunak said there should only be two choices for voters on 4 July.

Speaking at a campaign event in Oxfordshire, the prime minister said: “At the end of the day on July 5th, one of two people will be prime minister, either Keir Starmer or me. A vote for anyone who is not a Conservative candidate is just a vote to put Keir Starmer in No 10.

“So, if you’re someone who cares about tackling migration, both the boats and legal migration, if you’re someone who wants a more proportionate, pragmatic approach to net-zero that saves people money, and if you’re someone who wants lower taxes, it’s only the Conservatives that are going to offer those things. And that’s the choice at this election.”

He added: “Who would they rather see in No 10 on 5 July the 5th, working on these issues? Is it Keir Starmer or is it me?”

One new opinion poll was published over the weekend, and it suggested Labour continues to enjoy a large lead over the Conservatives – but where is Reform UK at the moment?

A survey on voting intention by Opinium published over the weekend came back with these figures: Labour 45%, Conservative 25%, Reform 11%, Liberal Democrats 8%, Green 6%, SNP 3% and other parties 2%.

Additional figures shown below, put together by the Press Association using averages of a number of previous polls, shows a modest rise in support for Reform and a steady decline for the Tories since 2019.

Nigel Farage is making an “emergency” announcement about the general election, with speculation mounting that the former UKIP leader will launch his latest bid to become an MP.

Sources have told The Independent that the honorary president of Reform UK will declare he is going to stand for parliament in Clacton, in Essex.

The seat is seen as a soft target with the pro-Remain former actor Giles Watling defending the seat for the Tories.

Read the full story from The Independent.

Nigel Farage has said he will be making an emergency announcement at 4pm today.