So does he want Corbyn in No10 – and no Brexit?

OSCAR Wilde famously wrote that ‘each man kills the thing he loves’. Yesterday, we witnessed Nigel Farage start doing just that. No British politician has achieved more to advance the cause of British freedom from Brussels’ rule. The victorious Leave vote in the 2016 referendum was a testimony to the power of his arguments and his charisma.

But now, by his refusal to co-operate with the Tories, he risks thwarting Brexit, the central purpose of his entire political career. At the very moment when there is a golden opportunity to elect a government fully committed to British independence from the monolithic European super-state, his intransigence may sabotage the cause.

Doesn’t Farage realise that with Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, this country has the best chance to break free? Doesn’t he realise that the idea of Johnson ditching the Withdrawal Agreement he recently secured from Brussels – which Farage is demanding – is an impossibility?

Indeed, the major motive for the PM calling a General Election is to win public approval for his deal so the Government can ‘get Brexit done’. But if Farage obstinately persists, the Tories and the Brexit Party will end up scrapping against each other on December 12, splitting the pro-Leave vote, guaranteeing that Johnson doesn’t get a Commons majority and risking a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn which would keep Britain in the EU. What a disastrous outcome. Even with a slim victory, Johnson’s robust Brexit strategy would be fragile, paralysis would prevail once more in Parliament, cranking up the pressure for a second referendum or even the revocation of Article 50.

On the other hand, a Tory defeat because the Leave vote split would open the way to a radical left-wing government under Corbyn and his Marxist cabal, propped up by Scottish Nationalists who would demand another independence referendum as the price of their support.

A glance at the electoral map shows just how vulnerable the Tories could be if they go headto-head with the Brexit Party. As an audit by the Mail showed yesterday, there are almost 90 Labour seats – mainly in the North of England and the Midlands – which could turn Tory if all pro-Brexit voters throw their weight behind Johnson.

Even if only 70 per cent of Brexit Party supporters back the Tories, at least 38 Labour seats would change hands – enough to avoid another miserable Commons deadlock.

And this is not mere conjecture. The recent Peterborough by-election highlighted the serious consequences of a split Leave vote. Labour’s vote there fell by 17 per cent, down to 10,500 votes, but that was still just enough to scrape home in front of the Brexit Party on 9,800, and the Conservatives on 7,200. With the support of just over a third of the Brexit Party’s votes, the Tories could have won by 6,500.

Translated onto the national stage, that result would undo decades of Farage’s noble work. His justification for his inflexible stance is that Johnson’s EU Withdrawal Agreement does not offer real independence and is ‘Brexit in name only’. ‘Drop the deal because it’s not Brexit,’ Farage said yesterday.

But this is unconvincing. After hard-fought negotiations, Johnson’s deal is a vast improvement on Theresa May’s. It would bring back control of our laws, trade and borders, while ending the threat of an Irish backstop that would have shackled us to the Customs Union. Even hardline Brexiteer MPs such as Steve Baker have been vociferous in their support of the agreement.

THErE are, of course, other factors to account for Farage’s stubbornness. One may be his personal resentment towards the Tories for stealing his party’s mantle as the real Brexit movement only a few months after his astonishing victory in the European election, when they consigned the Tories to fifth place. Another is his antipathy towards Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief aide and architect of the Tories’ aggressive Brexit strategy.

A further problem would be that, if the Brexit Party stood many candidates down, Farage would not be entitled to participate in televised debates. Also, what if he withdrew candidates from Tory-winnable seats but the Conservatives didn’t reciprocate by not fielding candidates in Brexit Partywinnable constituencies?

There could, however, be one possible benefit from Farage’s obstinacy. If a Tory/Brexit Party deal was struck, Labour would portray Johnson as the puppet of Farage, just as, in the 2015 General Election campaign, the Tories – with deadly effect – depicted then Labour leader Ed Miliband in the pocket of the SNP.

It should also be noted that ahead of the same election, many Tories felt that their only hope of victory was to reach a deal with the Brexit Party’s predecessor, UKIP, which was riding high in the polls.

The Tories’ David Cameron refused, but as it turned out, UKIP siphoned off voters from Labour, actually paving the way for Cameron’s unexpected victory. Tory optimists might hope that similar will happen in December. But in these volatile political times, it seems more likely that the Tories could be badly hurt by the fracture in the Leave vote.

That is why the only sure way to deliver Brexit is to support the Conservatives. As the former UKIP MP Douglas Carswell put it neatly yesterday: ‘Don’t waste your vote. If you want Brexit, back Boris.’