“Nigel Farage to stand for Reform UK in general election U-turn”, reports the Guardian:
The Conservative party’s faltering general election campaign suffered a potentially damaging blow when Nigel Farage announced he intended to stand as an MP and lead the Reform party for the next five years.
The former Ukip and Brexit party leader said he would stand in Clacton, Essex, after changing his mind while spending time on the campaign trail. He claimed that he did not want to let his supporters down.
Farage will also take over as leader of Reform UK from Richard Tice, pledging to stay in post for a full parliamentary term.
While his announcement poses an immediate threat to the Tory candidate in Clacton, it may also energise his party’s national campaign, splitting the rightwing vote in other constituencies.
It also raises the spectre of Farage antagonising the Tories as they descend into a post-election battle for the soul of their party.
Farage’s bid to win in Clacton, which was the first to elect a Ukip MP in 2014 and has a Tory majority of 24,702, will be his eighth attempt to enter parliament. He has failed on each of the previous seven occasions.
In any other election but this I would use those seven previous losses as the punchline to a joke about cats and his chances this time. But this time might really be different, for reasons given in the next paragraph of the Guardian’s report:
In a further blow to Sunak, YouGov’s first MRP constituency projection, before Farage’s announcement, showed Keir Starmer could win a 194 majority, bigger even than Tony Blair’s 179 majority in 1997.
No! How uncivil of him!
I think he will be Trumped. No, I don’t mean that he will be beaten by someone better but I fully expect to see a blizzard of trivial accusations thrown at him, hoping some will stick or resonate with a small percentage of the population to discredit him.
Want to bet on it?
He was previously well and truly Trumped in the 2015 general election when his high profile attempt to win the now defunct South Thanet constituency for UKIP was unsuccessful.
Traditionally this was one of several constituencies vying to be the first to declare their result on election might, a contest within a contest idiosyncratic to our system. However it was many hours into the following morning before the announcement was made that despite leading by double figures in pre-election polling Farage had been narrowly defeated by the Conservatives. Rumours of large numbers of ballots being delivered throughout the counting process were prevalent for some time afterwards.
In a rich twist of irony the winning candidate was also Trumped by drawn-out accusations of improper campaign spending (led by channel 4, the one that out-bbc’s the bbc in its partisanship) which may or may not have contributed towards his victory. This resulted in a full-blown criminal investigation lasting several years before his eventual exoneration.
Well Clacton is a natural place for him to stand, with its UKIP heritage and Douglas Carswell. It also has a fine airshow at the end of August, which I like to combine with a trip to the contrasting and beautiful Suffolk town of Lavenham. If a council is going to spend money on circuses, let them be airshows.
John
The candidate who beat Mr Farage in South Thanet in 2015 was Craig MacKinlay, who made a decent-enough Conservative MP, one of the most decent in terms of his stances, he had a UKIP past.
His election agent was convicted of an election spending offence, his defence, AIUI, was he didn’t know that the accounts he was handed were incorrect, he is a chartered accountant by profession but he wasn’t doing an audit, he took the figures on trust and signed them off. The issue was the Conservative Party using ‘national’ funds to flood the target constituency with activists and bussing them in to boost the local campaign, but keeping that ‘off the books’, the actual actus reus wasn’t in dispute it seems. The allegations related to not declaring some of these costs as local expenses and thereby going over spending limits for local campaigns (it all sounds a bit ‘American law style’, but it probably is).
Of course, the bigger fish who provided the money to ‘get Farage’ weren’t facing any charges. It might not be the case that spending has the impact politicians here imagine, but they like to control it tightly. Poor Mr MacKinlay suffered a terrible case of sepsis in the last year and ended up a quadruple amputee.
The weirdest thing about all these vote predictions and the general Tory hate, is that there’s no real corresponding enthusiasm for Starmer et al. It’s nothing like when Blair first stood – the enthusiasm for ‘New Labour’ was clear and real. If Farage gets his act together, then Reform could very well spring a significant suprise. It’s a big if of course…
Mr Ed
That’s very sad to hear. Stress from the criminal proceedings can’t have helped.
Bastards
Mr Farage is not the cat – the “international community” is the cat, and in less than a month they will be celebrating total (absolute) power over the British people.
Yes they have vast power now – but in a month they will have total, unlimited, power.
And that means that Mr Farage will also have lost – we will all have lost, lost any hope for the future of this land and people.
Mr Ed – Mr MacKinlay did not want to leave Parliament, but needed time to recover his strength and learn to work with artificial hands.
He was given no time – the election was called for July 4th, it is said, although I do NOT know this for a fact, because a certain person and his wife wanted to go and live in California.
It is hard to know what to say about this – so I will say nothing.
I think that an examination of the last 4 and a half years will show that they have it anyway. When the man calling the election reminded everyone when doing so, who would have thought that the government he served in would tell you how often you could leave your home?
Anyone who votes Conservative is an utter fool or malicious.
Apparently, according to the met Office, May was the hottest since records began (which in this context seems to be some time in the 1880s).
In May, I had my heating on more than once, and was hardly walking round in T shirts all the time (as I typically would be).
So I’ll take this as an indication of the “enthusiasm” for der Sturmer rather than any manufactured poll results.
If all is imposed by the globo filth, then what genuine difference does it make which cheek of the arse is exposed, or how outwardly extreme or “conservative” their creatures are? (not a facetious question)
I really am trying to think of any examples of the tories “rebelling” against said globo filth since 97. The only example I can think of is leaving toytown Austria-Hungary (yes, yes I know “did we really leave”. Mr potato head’s enabling act he thought would never become real because he didn’t expect to win. But having to do it they assumed it was as good as in the bag).
I think the Nige can take the lion’s share of the credit for that.
Never underestimate your enemies but don’t overestimate them either.
The creatures that they will see installed in a month are stupid, venal and self destructive to a degree that is difficult to get a normal head round.
They might even be stupid enough to blow it!
Mr Ed – I will be voting to return Mr Hollobone to Parliament, and I hope I am neither a fool or malicious.
As for the international community having total (absolute) power over the British people already – no they do not (not quite), but they soon will have.
And, yes, Mr Johnson giving in on lockdown was the key to the mess – Mr Johnson knew it was the wrong policy (a disaster economically – and morally), but he gave in to the intense pressure (Mr Cummings getting his orders from Mr Gates and other international figures) – that weakness led to everything else. There he was trotting out the slogans of the despicable international community – such as “Build Back Better” (it felt like a dagger twisting in my heart when I heard that).
Indeed the weakness had already been seen – for example swearing that there would be no border down the Irish Sea and then agreeing to one (betraying Northern Ireland) – weakness, weakness when put under terrible pressure.
Do not underestimate the pressure – all (all) the officials and “experts” tell you that you “must” do XYZ – that it is policy, that it has been decided….
And a British Prime Minister can be removed with ease – unlike an American State Governor who is in a stronger position to say NO and stick to NO.
Yet only a handful of American State Governors stuck to NO when it came to the lockdowns.
Assuming that President Trump is not murdered (always a possibility) he will return to the Whitehouse on January 20th 2025 – but he will inherit a government filled with officials he can not, under the Civil Service Acts, get rid of. People dedicated to doing as much harm as possible.
It will be a difficult situation – almost as difficult as the last four years in the United Kingdom where all the officials and “experts” were the sworn enemies of the Conservative Party elected government.
Pete North, on Nick Dixon’s show, offers his views on Reform. Interesting listen.
https://youtu.be/7kn-9hiZTak?si=SjbKmvXvQ8FOV7eA
And the violence against Mr Farage has already started.
No, this is like 1940, not 1945, things are going to get worse, but the war’s by no means over. There’ll be further enemy victories & it’s going to get grimmer. But five years from now, far from consolidating their power, I predict the enemy will be vastly overextended & in disarray as they choke on their own contradictions.
They fixed the headline, but the page title still says, “Farage has drink thrown on him at Clacton election launch”.
I didn’t know Farage was Jewish, or that Clacton was in the Middle East.