Tories offered to make me a peer twice: Nigel Farage

The Brexit Party leader says his backing cannot be bought with with ‘Christmas baubles’.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage arrives for the launch of the party’s manifesto in London on Saturday. Picture: Getty Images

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has claimed he was twice offered a peerage and a senior colleague was offered a safe Tory seat in a bid to persuade the Brexit Party not to run against the Conservatives in the UK general election.

Mr Farage said the Conservatives had tried to “buy” his backing with “Christmas baubles” but added: “We won’t be bought.”

The claims emerged after Mr Farage on Saturday issued Boris 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 on December 12.

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”.

Mr Farage has not met or spoken to Mr Johnson since the latter became prime minister, but has been in regular dialogue with Tory MPs, who included Priti Patel before she returned to the cabinet in July as Home Secretary. He has talked to them about the prospect of an electoral pact.

Mr Johnson last week ruled out any pact, a view shared by his closest aide, Dominic Cummings. But 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 MEP had been informally approached about whether they wanted to stand as a Conservative at the election.

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.

“That 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. I said I was not interested.

“One of my very close colleagues was offered one of the safest Conservative seats in the country yesterday morning. A very senior figure. They rejected it outright. It was a shire counties seat.”

Party sources suggested the offer was made to Brexit Party chairman Richard Tice, who is a member of the European Parliament. Mr Tice last year sought to run as the Tory candidate for London mayor. Mr Tice did not deny he had been offered a seat, but said: “There are no circumstances in which I would defect to the Tories”.

Mr Farage said: “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.”

He also implied that John Longworth, another of the Brexit Party’s MEPs, had been offered the chance to run as a Conservative. Mr Farage and Mr Longworth have fallen out after the latter suggested the Brexit Party might contest only 20 seats. Mr Farage demolished that plan on Saturday in a move that he kept secret from most of his colleagues until he appeared at the party’s campaign launch in London.

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

Mr Farage said he would use his party election broadcast to explain to voters that Mr Johnson’s deal would leave Britain in close alignment with EU rules for up to three years, something the Prime Minister denies. “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, somewhat perversely, said the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, had “played a blinder”. “We have committed to the end of the transition period . . . to negotiate a free-trade deal in line with the political declaration. That is absolutely clear about the principle of alignment,” he said. “We are checkmated by these documents. Boris can argue that these are opening gambits. No, they’re not. They’re complete red lines to Barnier.”

Mr Farage said if it came to a second referendum and “if the question was Boris’s so-called Brexit or remain, I wouldn’t vote. That’s how appalling I think the trap is. Remain wins every time.”

He will announce this week where he will stand. The Tory-held Essex seat of Thurrock is “a possibility”. But he said “it might make more sense” to fight a Labour leave seat in the north.

The Sunday Times