Nigel Farage’s European election-winning machine is the guest that has not yet turned up to the 2019 general election party. This can only be because it has certain fundamental questions still to settle about the nature of its campaign. Such as how many seats to fight. And whether to adopt a strategy of being slightly cuddly towards the Tories or one of strict “equi-hostility” towards all parties that do not back its “clean break” version of Brexit. Which, in effect, would mean all other parties.
Reports in the Financial Times and elsewhere in recent days suggest that despite selecting almost a complete slate of candidates, the party is likely to contest only a small proportion of parliamentary seats and may even formally stand most of its candidates down. Farage is even said to be contemplating not contesting a seat himself.
This hasn’t stopped chatter on social media among keen Brexiteers about how great it would be if the Conservatives went into coalition with Brexit party MPs after the election, with Nigel Farage as foreign secretary and Richard Tice as chief secretary to the Treasury et cetera.
I am sorry to disappoint all the players of this game of fantasy Cabinets, but it is most unlikely there will be any formal pact between the Conservatives and the Brexit party in the run up to the election, still less a coalition between them afterwards.
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David Butterfield
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Nigel Farage and his cohorts went in very hard against Boris Johnson’s new Withdrawal Agreement with Brussels, seeking to brand it both a complete surrender and also to characterise it as that creature which dwells most threateningly of all in Brexiteer demonology, a “BRINO” (Brexit In Name Only).
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