‘Utterly broken’ Tories will soon descend into warfare, says Farage

Nigel Farage could not be in better spirits. With a Cuban cigar in one hand and a glass of double gin and tonic in the other, he is relaxing on the terrace of his favourite Belgravia restaurant at the end of a long week.

And he has every reason to feel smug. The moment he had been waiting for - and Conservative party strategists had been dreading more than anything else - finally arrived: Reform UK overtook the Tories in an opinion poll for the first time.

Mr Farage hastily called a press conference to celebrate on Friday and then headed over to the exclusive Boisdale restaurant where we met for lunch.

The Reform party leader, who confounded expectations by making a return to frontline politics two weeks ago, claimed that his party overtaking the Tories in a YouGov poll was not only a pivotal moment in the election campaign, but in the battle for the future of the Right.

“Within a week, you watch, within a week there’ll be warfare within the Conservative Party as there was in the run-up to ‘97,” he said, referring to the 1997 general election when former prime minister Sir John Major was defeated in a landslide by the Labour party, ending 18 years of Conservative government.

“In the run-up to ‘97, John Major said that he was agnostic about joining the Euro. Those who wanted to join the Euro did their own manifesto and raised their own money. It was an absolutely split, divided joke and the same will happen in this election. You watch, it’s coming.

“You will start to see those MPs, who I agree with on most things, start becoming much more vociferous about their stance as opposed to that of the party. The splits are going to get worse. And to them, I will say: “Sorry guys, you are just in the wrong party.”

And his prediction is, by all accounts, not far off the mark. The day after the poll, Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, gave an interview to The Telegraph, in which she blamed the Conservative Party’s “depressing” electoral position on its failure to tackle migration, something she said she had urged Rishi to take action on.

Writing for The Telegraph former immigration minister Robert Jenrick says he “shares the frustrations” of traditional Tory voters defecting to Reform, pointing to failures in the Government’s immigration policy, high tax burden, the “soft” criminal justice system and “inefficient” public services.

Mr Farage expands on his argument by pointing to a former Conservative minister who featured a picture of the two of them smiling together on her election leaflet. Dame Andrea Jenkyns, who is standing for election in the new seat of Leeds South West and Morley in West Yorkshire, included a photograph of herself with the Reform UK leader on her campaign material. Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak does not appear on the leaflet and nor is the Conservative Party mentioned.

“Andrea Jenkyns put my photograph on the leaflets - and texted me afterwards: ‘Do you like it?’ I like it, of course I do. But she didn’t ask me. That sums up where they are,” Mr Farage said.

“But on the other end, you’ve got Lord Heseltine saying I’m like Oswald Mosley. The Brexit debate has exposed the broad church argument - it might be a broad church, but it has no religion. It has no faith. So what’s the point of it?”

Reform has almost doubled its support since from the level it was polling at just before Mr Farage revealed he was taking up the helm once more, both as party leader and as a parliamentary candidate for Clacton. A YouGov survey released hours before Mr Farage made his announcement on June 3 had put Reform at 10 per cent, while the Tories were comfortable in second at 25 per cent.

His decision blindsided Tory strategists, who thought that by calling a snap election they had headed off the threat of having to face him at the election. Mr Farage had initially ruled out standing to become an MP once more, saying that he wanted to focus on campaigning for Donald Trump in the upcoming US presidential election.

He revealed that the role he had lined up was to work for a “big grassroots” group, and would have involved “campaigning on the ground, travelling around America, inspiring the troops” with the message that “we beat the establishment on Brexit because we got off our backsides and did stuff. You can do the same type of thing”.

Hinting at the large salary that would have come with the role, he said: “If anybody tells me ‘you’re standing in Clacton to enrich yourself’, I’m going to struggle not to scream.” While he will no longer play a formal role in Trump’s campaign, he still intends to travel to the US to support him and “lend my voice”.

Mr Farage says that now only a “very, very small minority” of Tory MPs are “what I call Conservative”. He says the Tory brand is now “utterly broken” but rather than a sudden change, there has been a “steady erosion” over time.

“Boris leaving, in some ways, was part of it,” Mr Farage said. “But actually Boris was part of the problem. Because he never really believed in what he was saying. And that was very clear.

“I mean, Rishi is trying to roll back over that net zero stuff, all the lunacy, the trans stuff, the Stonewall stuff. I mean, the Johnson years were the most unconservative the Conservative party has ever seen. He just had the charisma and the bravado to carry it off for a bit. But what we really woke up to was a slow, steady erosion of trust, to a point where one day it becomes a betrayal. That’s how a lot of people feel.”

He takes the opportunity to point out that Mr Johnson never thanked him for standing down his candidates in the 2019 election, which he says paved the way for a massive Conservative majority.

Mr Farage is just as disparaging about Mr Sunak as he is about the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, saying there is “absolute disenchantment” among the electorate with both leaders.

“One a slippery spinner,” he said, referring to Mr Sunak. “If net migration goes from 700,000 to 690,000 it’s a victory”.

Turning to Sir Keir, he said: “And the other just almost looks like he doesn’t want to be there. I’m sure he’s a nice bloke and everything but [he is] lifeless. No energy, no enthusiasm, no commitment. Clearly no fundamental beliefs in anything in particular. I mean he could be a Tory. Rather like Cameron could be Labour.”

On Monday, Mr Farage will hold Reform’s manifesto launch in the Welsh valleys as he opens up a new front by taking the fight to Labour.

He believes Reform can take seats from Labour in Wales, which voted strongly to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum.

He believes working-class communities in the principality have been forgotten by Westminster in the years since devolution, and that they have been poorly served by the Labour-controlled Welsh Assembly. All but five council areas in Wales voted Leave in 2016, including the former mining communities in the valleys in South Wales.

The Reform manifesto will contain plenty of criticism of the Conservative government, but will also highlight “the disaster of the devolved Labour government in a left behind part of the country”, according to a party source.

“I have no idea where this journey ends,” Mr Farage says. “But the important thing to remember is, this is not a commando raid. This is not a quick hit and get out. I made a big commitment for the next five years.

“I intend to build an enormous grassroots movement across this country of people who believe that PC Westminster talk doesn’t reflect their lives, their aspirations, their hopes and their fears. The referendum showed us the disconnect - it is even bigger now.”