Nigel Farage says his party will stand aside in all 317 seats the Tories won in 2017. This drastic u-turn in the Brexit party election strategy had been expected. But it still strikes me as a poorly thought through plan, given that it means the Brexit party will give a free pass to Brexit rebels like Greg Clark (in Tunbridge Wells) and also make life difficult for Tories in top Labour-held target seats.
Farage can point to an explicit, on-camera promise from Boris Johnson about not extending the post-EU departure transitional phase beyond the end of next year as yet another shift he has forced in the Tory position. And he can use that as a rationale for abandoning his unconvincing threat to stand everywhere.
But I can’t help but feel he has missed a trick and is still over-extending his party’s resources without having sufficiently thought through a targeted strategy. There is still time for him to hone the message and the campaign further though.
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