Now Brexit Party quits dozens more seats

Boost for Tories as Farage candidates dramatically drop out at last minute

‘We don’t do deals’ ‘A lunatic Marxist government’

NIGEL Farage faced embarrassment yesterday after he failed to field election candidates in dozens of seats across the country as supporters dropped out at the last minute.

The Brexit Party leader had vowed to contest 300 constituencies – including every seat held by Labour – but figures released after the close of nominations showed he had managed to put up only 275 candidates.

It means that – excluding constituencies held by Tories – there are 41 seats in England, Wales and Scotland without a representative of his party standing.

Mr Farage had agreed to withdraw his candidates from the 317 seats won by the Tories at the last election. But he refused to do the same in Labour-held constituencies targeted by Boris Johnson, despite warnings that he risked splitting the pro-Brexit vote and letting Jeremy Corbyn into power.

However, a number of candidates defied Mr Farage and refused to hand in their nomination papers. These included those due to stand in Dudley North, Canterbury and Lanark and

Hamilton East, where the Tories need only a few hundred votes to take the seats.

The Prime Minister dismissed as ‘nonsense’ claims that the Tories offered peerages to senior Brexit Party figures to get them to stand aside in the election.

Mr Farage, who yesterday pulled out of two rallies he was due to attend, has claimed he had repeatedly been offered a seat in the House of Lords in an attempt to persuade him to ‘go quietly’.

He said when that failed, people ‘deep inside No 10’ tried to bypass him, going to senior figures in his party and suggesting eight of them could be made peers if they could persuade him to withdraw more of his candidates. Asked during a BBC Radio 5 Live phonein about the claims yesterday, Mr Johnson acknowledged there may have been ‘conversations’ between senior Tories and figures in the Brexit Party.

But he flatly denied there had been offers of peerages, saying: ‘What is this nonsense?

‘I am sure that there are conversations that take place between politicians of all parties. Certainly nobody has been offered a peerage, I can tell you that.

‘The Conservative Party doesn’t do deals of this kind. It is just not the way we operate. We don’t do deals. I think that will be pretty obvious from what has happened. We have made no undertakings.’

Mr Farage yesterday accused Brexit Party MEP Rupert Lowe of ‘disgusting behaviour’ after he pulled out of Dudley North – where Labour has a majority of just 22 – moments before Thursday’s 4pm deadline for nominations.

He said: ‘ It’s disappointing behaviour. I’m actually appalled at Rupert. I’m sure he was promised something [by the Tories]. I know he met with a No 10 official last week, someone quite senior. It’s disappointing.’

Mr Lowe, a former chairman of Southampton Football Club, said ‘conversations’ had been had with the Tories but denied meeting a No 10 official.

He added Ian Austin, the constituency’s former Labour MP, had also encouraged him to stand down so the Tories have a clean run against Mr Corbyn’s party.

He said: ‘I think Nigel’s been suggesting there’s been some sort of inducement down the line, which there hasn’t.

‘This is a decision made of my own volition because I think that had I stood the seat would have gone to Labour and we would help potentially have a lunatic, Marxist government in charge. The Labour candidate in Dudley North is backed by Momentum and that needs to be stopped.’

Many of the seats where the Brexit Party does not have candidates are in Scotland. Calum Walker, who was due to stand in Dundee East, said yesterday the majority of the party’s Scottish candidates withdrew to prevent splitting the anti-SNP vote.

He added: ‘We realised we were only going to let in the SNP and the other thing at play in Scotland is that the SNP want a referendum on independence too.

‘So if we stood, two referendums become more likely. I spoke to dozens of other candidates who said they would do the same.’