Farage ‘to target Labour seats that voted Leave’

NIGEL Farage last night suggested that the Brexit Party will target Labour Leave seats – which could still cost the Tories victory.

In an email to supporters, he said the party would have ‘a big challenge on our hands to clear out the Remainer Parliament and win a majority for Brexit’.

It signals that the party will not field candidates against Tory Eurosceptics.

However, even targeting Labour Leave seats could deny Mr Johnson a majority – as those are the seats he is hoping to win to offset possible losses to the SNP and Lib Dems. Mr Farage has previously said that the party would contest all seats, and it has amassed more than 600 candidates. But the party has been split since the Tories rejected an electoral pact.

Brexit Party MEP John Longworth has urged it to focus on a smaller number of seats in Brexit and Labour-supporting areas. And Arron Banks, founder of the Leave.EU campaign — which is credited with helping to win the 2016 referendum — and a close confidant of Mr Farage, also urged the Brexit Party not to run a full slate of candidates. ‘It’s not as simple as whether the Brexit party should stand down across the whole country… the national polls say one thing, but there is a different dynamic in each seat that has to be considered,’ he told the Financial Times.

‘If Nigel takes a tactical, pragmatic approach on where to run to help deliver Brexit he’ll be rewarded by voters,’ he said. The Mail revealed yesterday that chairman Richard Tice is receiving begging texts from Brexiteer Tory MPs calling for the Brexit Party to stand aside in their seats.

It will reveal tomorrow where it will stand candidates and a party spokesman said yesterday: ‘We continue to wish to have the broadest collection of clean Brexiteers — in line with the result of the 2016 referendum — in Parliament as possible to ensure a clean Brexit.’