Will Farage and Tories do a deal?
MoS poll reveals his support has plummeted ‘Heated’ talks with Tory power brokers Friends say pressure is taking toll on Nigel
SENIOR allies of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson have held secret last-minute talks in an effort to strike a deal that would stop the Brexit Party splitting the Tory vote and letting Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a close confidant of Mr Farage has held talks with senior Tory ‘power brokers’ over a deal to pull the vast majority of Brexit Party candidates out of the Election.
In return, Mr Johnson would promise to strike a harder deal with Brussels after winning a majority.
The offer, made by former Ukip treasurer Andrew Reid, comes as friends of Mr Farage say that he is ‘feeling the heat’ over his defiant insistence on fielding hundreds of Brexit Party candidates.
Mr Farage is understood to have pulled out of a planned television performance this morning as a Mail on Sunday poll shows that support for the Brexit Party has nearly halved over the past week, from 11 per cent to six per cent.
The secret talks are revealed today by Arron Banks, formerly Mr Farage’s closest political ally, who objects to his strategy.
Last night, Mr Farage told this newspaper that he was ‘not directly involved’ in talks with the Tories, but warned that the ‘ clock was ticking down’ to the final deadline for candidate nominations on Thursday. He added: ‘I’m not asking for much’.
The talks come as chorus of voices from within the Brexit Party call for Mr Farage to perform a U-turn over his plans to field candidates in 600 seats.
It is understood that under the proposal made by Mr Reid, Mr Farage would accept the Withdrawal Agreement which Mr Johnson negotiated to govern our exit from the EU, as long as the PM made changes to the Political Declaration covering the UK’s postBrexit relations with the EU. If Mr Johnson cut the ‘transition period’ from 2022 to December 2020 and ensured that the UK would no longer be bound by Brussels regulations after that, then Mr Farage would stand down his candidates.
Sources said the discussions between Mr Reid and the Tory power brokers – which the Conservatives have not commented on – had been ‘heated’.
Mr Banks writes: ‘A compromise has been proposed which would see Nigel ordering those of his candidates who simply cannot win to stand aside – but only on condition t hat various entirely realistic changes are made to the deal which Boris negotiated with Brussels’.
The former Ukip and Leave.eu donor says: ‘The time for splitting hairs is over. It is now or never...
‘It is time for Nigel and his supporters to be realistic. If he ploughs ahead and refuses to stand down his party’s candidates – the ones who stand no chance at all of winning – then he will help Corbyn form the next Government.
‘If Brexit is lost because the vote i s split, t hen Nigel will have destroyed what he has spent years working to achieve’.
Mr Banks says that Mr Farage trusts Mr Reid as an ‘honest broker’ to carry out the talks. He previously acted as an intermediary between former MPs Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless when they defected to Ukip from the Conservative Party in September 2014.
Mr Banks adds: ‘ We must all remember this: it is better to continue fighting for the right type of Brexit f rom t he Government benches than to open the door of No 10 to a Marxist rabble hellbent on staying in the EU.
‘That is a prospect that should clear minds and cool egos’.
Yesterday, Peter Udale, who resigned on Thursday as t he Brexit Party’s candidate for the Cotswolds over Mr Farage’s stance, called for a pact to avoid splitting the Tory vote.
He said: ‘A Corbyn-led Government could irreversibly change the face of Britain. The Brexit Party must stand down candidates wherever they risk making Corbyn our Prime Minister. Even if the Tories will not agree to a deal, Nigel Farage must put country before party’.
And yesterday, Philip Walling, a former Brexit Party candidate in the key battleground seat of Workington, Cumbria, urged former colleagues to stand down.
‘ A Labour government would not only halt Brexit permanently, it would plunge this country into an economic nightmare,’ he wrote in the Daily Mail. ‘I cannot imagine anything more hideous. I plead with every other Brexit candidate to do what I have done: examine your conscience in the cold light of reason. And if you think you risk splitting the Tory vote, then for God’s sake stand down.’
‘I’m not asking for much,’ Farage insists