Nigel Farage has announced he will run as Reform UK’s candidate in Clacton, after previously saying he would not stand in July’s general election.
The former UKIP and Brexit Party leader said he had changed his mind after spending time on the campaign trail, adding he did not want to let his supporters down.
The Essex seat, which was the first to elect a UKIP MP in 2014, has a Conservative majority of 25,702.
Mr Farage also revealed he was taking over from Richard Tice as Reform’s leader for the next five years.
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No, how do you really feel about him?
He’s been doing his calculations on what gives him the most leverage in some future move - possibly just leveraging this for more cash but I wouldn’t put it past him to be trying to wreck the Tories (I am in favour of that) in a bid to end up running them (A Bad Thing and the road to fascism). Also Russia may have stumped up some cash to mess with us.
edit: I suppose the play could be: become MP, get begged to run the Tory Party (as who else is there? Penny Mordaunt?), merge the parties, turn around their fortunes with a populist right wing agenda, defeat Starmer in the next GE and then fascism for all, possibly in parallel with Trump naming himself dictator in perpetuum.
It’s all media attention to drive up his profile. If he actually got in he would never turn up and be a tiny little voice.
This would be the 9th time he’s run as an MP for our parliament.
Ninth time unlucky hopefully 🤞
However, he wouldn’t have done this if his odds were good, so…
Yeah he’s a huge loser based on his track record alone.
Clacton is one of the most deprived seats in the UK so people there might just be desperate enough.
One the one hand, he wouldn’t change his mind unless he stood a good chance; on the other hand, he keeps running and losing despite, presumably, thinking he was a dead cert each time.
Clacton was predicted to be held the Tories, but only by 7%, with Labour in second (according to FT’s poll tracker). Farage standing throws that out completely, it’s safe to say.
Question is, will Labour voters lend the Tories votes to keep Farage out?
Now there’s a tricky one because Labour will also think that this splits the right wing vote, letting them sneak in.
True! We need some constituency-specific polling to know what’s going on, otherwise we’re just speculating! Where’s Ashcroft when you need him?
We need some constituency-specific polling to know what’s going on, otherwise we’re just speculating!
Indeed. I imagine there will be a scramble to dig into this one.
Where’s Ashcroft when you need him?
Up to no good?
Yeah, finding another Labour MP to smear, probably. But his polling is good!
Clacton was predicted to be held the Tories, but only by 7%, with Labour in second (according to FT’s poll tracker). Farage standing throws that out completely, it’s safe to say.
As Douglas Carswell held the seat from it’s creation in 2010 through his being Tory, UKIP (with it being a UKIP win in.the by-election he triggered by detecting and in the 2015 general election) and independent until the Tories won in 2017, it is probably the safest possible seat for Reform in the country and Farage could definitely swing it. It’s demographics trend towards older, white and deprived which is the target for Reform.
Howsabout this twat reforms us back into the EU
