Farage: Vote Tory where we can’t win
UKIP supporters should consider switching to back the Conservatives in seats which their party will not win, Nigel Farage suggested yesterday.
He said his backers must ‘use their votes as wisely as they can’ and that he wanted to see the Tories end up as the largest party in the Commons.
Mr Farage also appeared to concede he had made a mistake by pledging to stand down if he fails to win South Thanet, Kent, where he is trying to be elected as an MP for the first time.
A leaked survey commissioned by Ukip suggested the Tories have a narrow lead in the seat, which has been visited in recent days by ministers including Elizabeth Truss and Patrick McLoughlin.
Mr Farage said the ‘stakes are very high’ in the constituency, adding: ‘In some ways that’s my fault for saying if I don’t win I will quit as leader of Ukip.’
David Cameron last week urged Ukip supporters to ‘come home’ to the Conservatives. In a direct appeal to voters who have shifted allegiance to Mr Farage’s party, the Prime Minister vowed to ‘do more’ to respond to concerns about immigration.
With the election on a knife-edge, he warned that it is ‘not the time to send a message or make a protest’.
As another poll, from Opinium, suggested Ukip’s support is slipping, putting the party on a two-year low, Mr Farage yesterday indicated for the first time that he is in favour of tactical voting. He suggested Ukip voters could support Tory candidates where the party has no chance of winning, and vice versa. ‘Of course, it’s a complex electoral system and people have to use their votes as wisely as they can,’ he said.
Mr Farage said Ukip MPs could prop up a Conservative government to keep Ed Miliband out of power. ‘If the Tories were the biggest party, and we helped to make up the numbers and this country had a full, free and fair referendum [on EU membership], that would be an infinitely better position,’ he said. ‘Getting people out there who agree with us but who have never voted in their lives, to break the habit and go out and vote – that is my biggest challenge.’
In a separate interview, Mr Farage suggested he would be pleased to quit politics to become a ‘house husband’ if he loses in Kent. ‘I’d be over the moon,’ he told the Sunday People.
‘I’m 50. I’ve worked like a maniac since 18. If someone said, “here is a lifestyle where you haven’t got to be out as the male,” it wouldn’t be a problem.’ His intervention came after one prominent Ukip candidate admitted the party is ‘not in the running’ and backed Mr Cameron to win the election.
John van Weenen, standing against former Conservative frontbencher Andrew Selous in Tory-held South West Bedfordshire, said he had decided to speak out because of the threat of Labour taking power propped up by the surging Scottish National Party.
He said: ‘I can see what’s going to happen. The SNP is going to get in, and I’d rather see Cameron get in. I’ve got a lot of time for Ukip and Nigel Farage but looking at the bigger picture Ukip is not in the running.’
Yesterday, it was reported that private polling also suggests Tory defector Mark Reckless, who won the seat of Rochester and Strood for Ukip in a by-election last year, is heading for defeat. Kelly Tolhurst, the Conservative candidate, is said to be on track to overturn his 2,920 majority.
A UKIP candidate is due to take part in a controversial ‘gay cure’ conference.
Alan Craig, who is standing in Brent North, will be a guest speaker at the event in London tomorrow. It is being organised by the Core Issues Trust, which says it is ‘a non-profit Christian ministry supporting men and women with homosexual issues who voluntarily seek change in sexual preference and expression’.
Mr Craig previously caused anger when he described same-sex marriage as ‘social vandalism’ and a ‘democratic disgrace’.
A Ukip spokesman said: ‘Mr Craig is not representative of Ukip’s view on this matter. But as a party that believes in freedom of speech he has the right to speak.’