Nigel Farage: I’ve got better things to do than get MPs to join Reform

Nigel Farage: I’ve got better things to do than get MPs to join Reform
Georgia Pearce

By Georgia Pearce


Published: 09/07/2024

- 06:49

Nigel Farage has said he doesn’t worry about the Conservative Party clawing back support from Reform under a new leader and says he has set his sights on Labour voters who supported Brexit.

Farage also said he had ‘better things to do’ than call up former or sitting MPs and ask them to defect to Reform.

Speaking to GB News, Nigel Farage said: “The political establishment wants to stop us. The political establishment do not want change.

“Rishi gives way to Keir, which is just a change in middle management. Nothing radically different is going to happen, things will just get a little bit worse.

“If you look at the story selection from the BBC, things that activists said became major news stories. Did that happen with the Labour Party under Corbyn? Well, we did see some of the antiSemitism, but frankly, not that much of it.

“The Channel Four stitch up over the ‘so called racist campaigner’. I mean, [he was] the biggest fraud I've ever seen. The guy's an actor, a posh actor, who turned up in our office sounding like Alf Garner. I mean, the whole thing was a stitch up.

“I could moan and moan and moan, but there isn't much point. The fact is that we have no support from any national newspaper. The broadcasters, including GB News, were very limited by Ofcom in terms of the coverage they could actually give us, and the BBC acted as a political actor right throughout.

“My first interview on the BBC, I did a speech from Dover about the boats and why Labour's plan wouldn't work, and the new BBC news channel took it live. Midway through, they cut off, and the presenter said, ‘Well, there's Nigel Farage again using his customary inflammatory language.’

“Just extraordinary. Now, I actually got an on air apology, but that's not the point. It was clear from the start but the BBC had a political objective. This ran right through the Russia stuff, where the fact that I predicted 10 years ago what would happen when I was right about Ukraine suddenly becomes, I’m a Putin support.

“Some of this stuff's always going to happen. It's politics, people get very tribal, but the extent of the bashing was extraordinary.

“I'm already planning county council elections next year.

“We are very conscious now of the potential we have with Labour voters. Tony Blair even writes in the Sunday Times that Reform could now be a threat to a Labour vote.

“The whole establishment knows that we're here. And can the Conservative Party claw those votes back from us? They're so split and divided, the civil war has broken out already within the Conservative party.

“I genuinely think we're in a very, very strong position. Our membership is booming. We've got more members now than I ever had in UKIP, for example, even when that was a major party, going back a decade.

“So look, we're in good shape.

“Boris is the reason [the Conservatives] are in this much trouble. He's the one who betrayed the reason that so many red wallers voted Conservative the first time in their lives in 2019.

“So the idea that Boris leads them back to victory, frankly, I think that's completely for the birds.

“I don't think it matters who wins, whether it's a Priti Patel or Suella Braverman, whether it's Jeremy Hunt, it could be a Tugenhat. I think it matters who wins. They will be split and divided. They don't agree on anything.

“The one nation internationalist, globalist view against the eurosceptic view. I mean, the earthquake of Brexit; the shock waves are still coming through the political system.

“And one of the reasons Blair is really worried about the Labour vote and us is, it's all well and good David Lammy saying we want to have a better relationship with the European Union, but if that means tying us back to EU rules, then the Labour Party are going to be vulnerable with many of their voters who did vote Brexit.

“So I think we're in a very good place. Am I ringing out former MPs or current MPs saying, 'join us'. I've got better things to do.”

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