Drop the deal .. or the country gets it
Farage threatens to field a candidate in every UK constituency if BoJo doesn’t join hard Brexit alliance
NIGEL Farage yesterday threatened Boris Johnson he’d field a candidate in every British constituency unless the PM joined him in a “Leave alliance” to sink Jeremy Corbyn’s bid to become prime minister.
The Brexit Party leader said he was “more than willing to compromise” – if the Tory leader dumps his “dreadful” Brexit withdrawal agreement and switches to no-deal instead.
The PM was already reeling from Donald Trump claiming the exit pact could scupper a trade deal with the US.
No10 was forced to deny the US president’s warning the deal struck with Brussels would torpedo trade agreements with other countries.
Farage piled pressure on the PM over a deal not to fight each other in the ballot box race. He called for up to 150 Tory candidates to step aside in Labour seats which have never gone Tory – in exchange for the Brexit Party
not contesting other Conservative seats.
Farage is demanding Johnson scraps his withdrawal deal, breaks off negotiations with the EU and quits the bloc at the end of May 2020. The new exit day is January 31.
Farage told Johnson: “Drop the deal because it is not Brexit.”
He claimed the PM’s deal was a “second-hand motor with Mrs May’s appalling surrender treaty” under the bonnet.
If there is no agreement with the Tories, Farage warned: “We will contest every single seat in England, Scotland and Wales.”
He added: “Please don’t doubt we are ready.
“Next Monday we have 500 candidates coming to London and they will all be signing their candidate forms on that day.
“There are two weeks to put together a Leave alliance and it needs to be done.”
Farage vowed to reveal if and where he intends to stand “in the coming days”. Explaining his “non-aggression pact”, Farage said Labour-held constituencies were in his sights.
He added: “There are seats in which we would not stand and there are seats in which the Conservatives would not stand.
“In particular, ‘old Labour’ seats that have never ever been Conservative, never ever will be Conservative, where there were Leave majorities in the referendum but they’re represented by Remain MPs.
“And they, for us, are our number one target.”
Farage claimed he was “open to local exceptions” in the event a deal between the Tories and Brexit Party fell apart – but only if Tory MPs “renounce the withdrawal agreement, renounce the deal, and stand on a ticket of a free trade agreement or leave on WTO terms”.
Tory Party chairman James Cleverly said voting for Farage “risks letting Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street via the back door”, adding: “It will not get Brexit done – it will create another gridlocked Parliament.”
A senior Tory source previously said Farage was not a “fit and proper person” and “should never be allowed anywhere near government”.
Earlier, Trump appeared to call for an electoral pact between Farage and Johnson, saying the pair could become an “unstoppable force”.
But Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said yesterday: “We are not interested in doing any pacts with the Brexit Party, or, indeed with anybody else. “We are in this to win it.” It came as tensions mounted between Downing Street and the White House over the PM’s Brexit deal.
The president warned a trade pact between the UK and the US could be jeopardised by Britain’s withdrawal deal.
But Jenrick insisted Trump was wrong, saying: “We think that the new deal enables the whole of the UK to leave the EU customs union and that means that we can now strike our own free trade deals around the world.”