Ditch May’s deal to get our help, Farage tells Tories

NIGEL FARAGE has said he would find it difficult to work with a future Tory leader who backed Theresa May’s Brexit deal, ruling out a tie-up with Boris Johnson or Dominic Raab.

Tory MPS are openly speculating on whether a future Conservative leader would come to a deal over contesting seats if a general election is called to try to break the Brexit impasse in Parliament.

On Saturday, Crispin Blunt, the Conservative MP, said it was an “unavoidable necessity” that the Tories would have to form “some kind of electoral pact and common platform” with the Brexit Party.

However, on a campaign tour of Essex, Mr Farage was asked if the next leader would have to drop support for the Withdrawal Agreement to win the Brexit Party’s backing.

“Of course. Absolutely,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

A pledge from any future Tory leader to leave the EU on WTO terms on October 31 would be a “great step in the right direction”, Mr Farage added. “But would they actually stick to it? How could we trust them? That is the problem.”

On the subject of Boris Johnson, the Brexit Party leader said: “Boris voted for the Withdrawal Agreement despite everything he had written in your newspaper. I have got a real problem with that. Boris talked about vassalage, talked about slave state, talked about May’s treaty in more colourful language than I would use and then votes for it. So what does he really believe?”

The comments will put pressure on Mr Johnson, Mr Raab and other Brexiteer Tory MPS who want to succeed Mrs May as leader to withhold support for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill when it is put to MPS in the week commencing June 3. Mr Farage said his party was attracting donations of £100,000 a day and he had ordered his party to select 650 candidates to fight a general election. Extra staff had been recruited to process donations, and check the donors’ details against the electoral register, he added.

About 2,000 people a day, paying £25 each to join his party, had brought supporter numbers to nearly 110,000, he said – just short of the Tories’ 124,000 membership.

The Brexit Party, launched on April 12, is the fastest-growing political party in modern British history.

Mr Farage said: “There is a new kind of supporter coming forward. We are very grateful that people are coming on board at a different level.

“People who give real money will only help organisations that help themselves.”

Lord Heseltine said he would not be supporting the Conservatives in the election on Thursday, and would vote Liberal Democrat. He said the party had become “infected by the virus of extremism” and he could not endorse its support for leaving the EU.

Last night Conservative MPS said Lord Heseltine should be stripped of the party whip. David Jones, a former Brexit minister, said: “Lord Heseltine says he will retain the Conservative whip in the Lords, but the party must make clear immediately whether it will allow him to do so… Any pro-brexit Tory who publicly endorsed the Brexit Party would have the whip withdrawn in double-quick time.”

In an article for The Sunday Times, Lord Heseltine wrote: “The reason for my experiment with the Lib Dems is, of course, the Government’s position on Brexit. I cannot, with a clear conscience, vote for my party when it is myopically focused on forcing through the biggest act of economic self-harm ever undertaken by a democratic government.

“I have no intention of being forced out – or resigning.”