Nigel Farage continues to tease Westminster with his endless ‘will he, won’t he?’ dance. The former Ukip leader is hosting an ‘emergency press conference’ at 4pm amid speculation that he will announce he is standing as a candidate for Reform. It’s been a rollercoaster fortnight for Farage. His initial response to the election was to rule himself out from running, preferring instead to focus on the United States. In the days that followed, Farage expressed his ‘huge regrets’ about that decision. His commitments stateside seem less extensive than many first thought, with Farage expecting to only do one event for Donald Trump in Detroit. His two speeches for Reform last week, meanwhile, received extensive media coverage.
In a somewhat staid contest between Sunak and Starmer, there is an obvious vacuum for a colourful character like Farage to fill. Five years ago, Farage was overshadowed by Boris Johnson’s presence; now there’s no such challenger. The Electoral Commission deadline for candidates is 4pm on Friday, meaning he still has four days to find a seat. Farage knows better than most the perils of the first-past-the-post system, having stood for parliament and lost on seven occasions. But Reform, which is polling at around 11 per cent, does have concentrated pockets of support – especially if Farage is the local candidate on the ballot. One survey in January commissioned by former Ukip bankroller Arron Banks suggested that Farage would win 37 per cent of the vote in Clacton in Essex, beating the Tory incumbent there by ten percentage points.
Two further obstacles could stand in the way of a Farage candidacy. The first are his fears that he could be constrained by tying himself to one single constituency. He speaks bitterly of the 2015 election, when the Tories threw everything at him in South Thanet and he has little desire to spend hours door-knocking himself. Yet there’s no iron rule which means Farage would have to spend the entirety of the next five weeks in somewhere like Clacton or Hartlepool. Indeed, it could help dispel the arguments of broadcasters who claim that Farage ought not to be given airtime as he is not a candidate in this election.
There’s another possible obstacle for a potential return: Richard Tice. The relationship between the two men has at times been fraught, with one serving as Reform’s actual head and the other as its spiritual leader, in all but name. Asked this morning by TalkTV as to what Farage had planned, Tice grinned and declared: ‘We’re getting on absolutely fantastically. Of course, I know absolutely what we’re going to say (this afternoon).’ That, however, cannot be said for all members of Reform: the announcement was so sudden that members of the party’s campaign team had to scramble to get back to London from other parts of the country in time.
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