Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage won’t run in UK election

Nigel Farage has declared he will not stand as a candidate in the December 12 snap general election.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage won’t run in the UK election. Picture: AP

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has declared he will not stand as a candidate in the December 12 snap general election, as his party gears up to battle with the Conservatives for Leave voters.

Mr Farage, who has failed to win a seat in five general elections, confirmed on Sunday that he wanted to focus on leading the party during the campaign.

He said he thought “very hard” and pondered “how to serve the cause of Brexit best”.

“I don’t want to be in politics for the rest of my life,” he said, adding he would be out across the country to spread his party’s message.

Mr Farage, who instead is a member of the European parliament, said he had wanted to form an ­alliance of Leave, linking with the Conservatives, but said: “I still hope and pray it happens, but it doesn’t look like it will.”

He is still to determine whether the Brexit Party will stand candidates in most electorates, ­especially in seats where a split vote with the Conservative member would result in a Labour or Liberal Democrat victory. Elections in Britain are first past the post.

The Brexit Party’s position is that the Conservatives’ Brexit deal with the EU is too soft. Mr Farage wants a clean-break Brexit so that Britain can formulate independent trade deals immediately and negotiate a deal with the EU down the track.

He said Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pact with the EU was a “Remainer’s Brexit” and he ­labelled it a “massive con”.

Mr Farage also said he was ­offered a peerage by the Tories a couple of months ago if he did a deal with the Conservatives and not stand Brexit Party candidates in tight seats.

Mr Johnson has refused to do a deal with the Brexit Party, appealing to voters who want Brexit done to vote for the Conservatives.

“That (offer of a seat in the Lords) came from two very close sources — one from an adviser and one a minister, not a member of the cabinet — suggesting this was the right thing to do,” Mr Farage told the BBC.

“I said I was not interested. We won’t be bought.”

The claims emerged after Mr Farage on Saturday issued Mr Johnson with an ultimatum: his party will have candidates standing in every constituency in Britain unless the Prime Minister ditches his deal with Brussels and agrees to leave the EU on World Trade Organisation terms after the election.

He gave the Tories until nominations close on November 14 to decide and also threatened to send an election address to all 27 million households in Britain explaining why Mr Johnson’s deal “is not Brexit”.

“Boris’s deal is like a piece of cheese. When you get it out of the fridge, it’s really appetising and delicious for a few days, but after a couple of weeks it stinks and is inedible,” he said.

Mr Farage has not spoken to Mr Johnson since the latter ­became Prime Minister, but has talked regularly with Tory MPs.

He has talked to them about the prospect of an electoral pact, but Mr Johnson last week ruled out any pact, a view shared by his closest aide, Dominic Cummings.  Mr Farage said that some in Downing Street wanted to see at least an informal deal with the Brexit Party: “Cummings doesn’t want it, but there are a couple of cabinet ministers saying, ‘You should think about it’.”

Sources in the Tory party said that as well as “sounding out” Mr Farage about a peerage and “dangling” a safe seat before a senior Brexit Party official, at least one other party member of the European parliament had been informally approached about whether they wanted to stand as a Conservative at the election.

Mr Farage said: “All sorts of baubles have been offered.” Of the peerage, he said: “That happened twice, but we are going back a couple of months. They thought the deal was that if I accepted that, we would only fight a few seats. They think everyone is like them. There are two kinds of people in politics: those who want to do something and those who want to be somebody.”

A Tory source described Mr Farage’s claims as “unsubstantiated gossip”, but did not deny them outright.

Mr Johnson apologised on Sunday for not delivering his “do or die” pledge to leave the EU by October 31.

“It is a matter of deep regret,” Mr Johnson told Sky News, before criticising US President Donald Trump for saying his Brexit deal would prevent a future Britain-US trade agreement.

“I don’t wish to cast any aspersions on the President, but in that respect he is patently in error,” the Prime Minister said. “It (the deal) allows us to have full unfettered control of our tariff schedule”.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING:

The Sunday Times. AFP