So Farage is going to stand in Clacton ( or is it Clapton?)....its Clacton Essex And take over the leadership of UK Reform party. This is all very sudden and Democratic. I really hope it just goes so ti*s up
Good news for Labour I'd have thought Beth. Like him or hate him, Farage is a formidable character and him leading Reform can only mean more votes taken from the Tories imo.
I'd love to see Farage debate in the TV interviews with Sir Keir and Sunak (aka Two Cheeks on the Same Arse.)
Reasonable scenario - Starmer pm with huge majority - Current Tories all but wiped out - Farage elected MP - Trump elected POTUS Trump takes his lead from Farage on how to deal with Starmer
The Tories are heading for the biggest defeat in their history, with Farage taking even more votes from them.
…and all the useless twats could say after Farage made his announcement yesterday were predictable whines about how it would give Starmer the keys to Number 10. Nothing about why people should re-elect them. The Tories deserve at least 10 years out of power to (hopefully) renew themselves or implode. They need to become the party of proper, sensible small ‘c’ conservative values and distance themselves from the free market, shady business practice bollocks that has stuck for too long. But they won’t.
I think some of them might be back sooner than that. Farage is pretty obviously only interested in a massive and humiliating Tory defeat, leaving a rump in Parliament which will include a few, or perhaps more, ‘betrayed’ right wingers. Farage will reckon that a Starmer government will be more of the same incompetent value free crap we’ve had for years, and will quickly be deeply unpopular. A which point Farage rides to the rescue of the Tories, whether or not he’s elected in Clacton, merges Reform into them, gets elected leader as the only ‘man who can save them’ and takes them into the next election with the voters who will always vote Conservative in his pocket and a populist agenda to appeal to people who want to blame other people for their lives. Starmer might just be weak enough to allow him to win as well. Just my opinion.
…and you’re entitled to it. Personally, I think that would be a mistake. Reform appeal (and need to continue to appeal) to not only disenfranchised small ‘c’ conservatives, but also the so-called Red Wall working class, so shoe-horning into the Tories would be a betrayal of the latter in particular. Of course, what you describe wouldn’t surprise many if it happened, but I hope it doesn’t.
