Reform UK founder and honorary president Nigel Farage has announced he will not stand in the general election. There was speculation he would be unveiled as a parliamentary candidate by Reform leader Richard Tice.
In a statement posted on X, Mr Farage said he would “do my bit to help” the party, but now was “not the right time to go any further than that”.
Launching Reform’s campaign, Mr Tice said it would field candidates in all but 20 of the UK’s 650 constituencies.
The party would contest 630 seats across England, Scotland and Wales “no ifs, no buts”, he said.Mr Tice will stand in Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire, where Conservative MP Matt Warman had a majority of 25,621 in the 2019 general election.
Reform currently has one MP, Lee Anderson, who defected from the Tories in March. Contrary to what all the commentators say, the likes of my good friend Lee Anderson and myself, we are going to win seats,” Mr Tice told the party’s campaign launch in London. He played down Mr Farage’s decision, saying he would “be helping out significantly” during the election campaign. The GB News presenter is cancelling his show on the channel for the duration to free up time for campaigning.Calling it “the immigration election”, Mr Tice hit out at high levels of net migration, “establishment experts” and the “weak, feeble politicians who have broken Britain”. Rishi Sunak had “bottled it” and decided to “cut and run” by calling a summer election instead of holding on for the autumn, he argued. He said the prime minister was “absolutely terrified” by Reform’s upward progress in the opinion polls, “terrified as to where this may end up”.
The latest polls put the party at around 11% of the national vote, ahead of the Liberal Democrats, and Reform says it will have enough candidates to contest every seat.Reform insists it is targeting both Conservative and Labour voters, but evidence from recent by-elections suggests the Tories have the most to fear from the party, which Mr Farage led from 2019 to 2021 when it was known as the Brexit Party. In the last general election in 2019, it did not stand in constituencies won by Conservatives in 2017.
US election ‘huge’
Mr Farage had previously said he would not make an eighth attempt to become an MP at Westminster under its first-past-the-post electoral system. In his statement, he suggested his priority would be helping his friend, Donald Trump, return to the White House. He said he had “thought long and hard as to whether I should stand in the upcoming general election”.
Source: BBC
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