Conservative MPs are pleading with Reform UK not to stand against them in the general election, the leader of the rightwing populist party has claimed.
Richard Tice also said Nigel Farage – who said last year he believed he would be leading the Conservative party within three years – would play a formal role in Reform’s election campaign.
The party announced on Wednesday that Ben Habib, its deputy leader, would stand in the upcoming Wellingborough byelection in a move that will make it even harder for the Tories to defend a seat that Labour is hoping to take for the first time since 1997.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The party announced on Wednesday that Ben Habib, its deputy leader, would stand in the upcoming Wellingborough byelection in a move that will make it even harder for the Tories to defend a seat that Labour is hoping to take for the first time since 1997.
Farage – whose dominant shareholding in Reform makes him a “person with significant control”, according to its Companies House listing – told the Guardian he had never said he was going to come to the event.
Farage declined to say whether he would appear on stage at an event in February in Doncaster, where Reform is expected to announce its candidate list for the general election, but added: “It’s obviously going to be an important day.”
Recent polls have put support for Reform as high as 11% and it has pledged to stand in every constituency in England, Scotland and Wales in the general election, threatening to exacerbate the Tories’ electoral challenges by wiping out the majorities held by dozens of Rishi Sunak’s MPs.
I’m one of the nice guys,’” Tice said, referring to calls that he claimed he was routinely getting from Conservatives, as he reiterated that there would be no special deals “under any circumstances” with Sunak’s party.
At the press conference, where he attacked the Conservatives on taxation and immigration, he said the Tory deputy chair, Lee Anderson, was “terrified that Reform is going to put him out of a job”.
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