Farage urged to withdraw his campaign
NIGEL Farage was yesterday urged to swallow his pride and stand down the Brexit Party campaign after four of his MEPs quit.
As they endorsed Boris Johnson, the breakaway group even warned that their former leader was now putting Brexit in peril.
However, Mr Farage accused the gang of being Tory stooges and said he was “disappointed” they had quit seven days before the election.
Annunziata Rees-Mogg, sister of Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lance Forman, Lucy Harris and John Longworth, who lost the party whip on Wednesday in a Brexit row, will now sit as independents.
Mr Forman said he believed Mr Farage knows in his “heart of hearts” that to wind down the campaign is the “right thing to do”. He added: “He should stand down candidates. He might have to eat his pride.”
Ms Rees-Mogg said Mr Farage wants an independent UK but was “going completely the wrong way about it”. She added: “I don’t think a Brexit party should be putting Brexit itself at risk.” But Mr Farage claimed the gang was closely tied to the Tories.
He told BBC’s Andrew Neil: “One is a sister of a Cabinet minister, another one has a boyfriend working for that Cabinet minister and another one is a friend of Boris Johnson.”
Also in the interview he admitted the Brexit Party had ultimately failed to deliver a political shockwave.
He claimed his success at the European elections had helped “to create Boris Johnson” by shaping the debate on Britain’s EU departure.
He said: “I believe that this is the defining issue of our age. I wanted to try and put together a Brexit alliance.
“I failed because the Conservative Party didn’t want to do it.”
But he went on to say: “I’ll tell you what any party I lead does do, it shifts the centre of gravity in British politics in a very dramatic way.”