Farage may bid to be MP
NIGEL Farage would “probably” make another bid to be elected to Parliament if the result of the contest he fought in 2015 is overturned, he said yesterday.
The MEP lost to Tory candidate Craig Mackinlay in the general election battle for the Kent seat of Thanet South. It was the then Ukip leader Mr Farage’s seventh failed attempt to become an MP.
Kent Police and the Electoral Commission are investigating whether the Conservatives broke the law by failing properly to declare expenses relating to the Thanet campaign. Meanwhile, in another potential challenge to the 2015 result, there is said to be an accusation that Ukip’s only MP, Douglas Carswell, passed local Ukip voter details to the Tories to help them defeat Mr Farage.
Mr Farage, who has a long-running feud with the Clacton MP, said he was “dubious” about a press report that a “dossier” had been drawn up for police.
“Were there concerns about the downloading of data that took place from that constituency? Yes. But beyond that we don’t know anything,” Mr Farage told BBC One’s Sunday Politics.
“We have evidence Mr Carswell downloaded information. We have no evidence of what he did with it.”
Asked if he would stand again for Ukip in Thanet if the enquiries caused a by-election, Mr Farage said: “I probably would.”
Mr Carswell, who defected from the Tories in 2014 and held his seat for Ukip in the by-election he called and again at the 2015 election, said in response to the allegation against him: “I am not commenting but I very strongly deny it.”