Farage targets Leave-voting Labour heartlands

NIGEL Farage said yesterday that he is planning a ‘northern attack’ on Labourvoting Leave areas.

It came as Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, called for his party to back a second Brexit referendum.

Mr Farage, leader of the new Brexit Party, which last week surged to a shock lead in the polls, said he would be targeting ‘Labour lies and dishonesty’ in the run-up to the European Parliament elections on May 23.

He said any notion of a second referendum would be a ‘total insult’ to the five million Labour supporters who voted Leave. But Mr Watson insisted Labour backing for a second – or ‘confirmatory’ – referendum was the only way to respond to the challenge posed by Mr Farage.

His comments appear aimed at putting pressure on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to make a second vote a red line issue in Brexit talks with Theresa May.

Writing in The Observer, Mr Watson said: ‘Labour won’t defeat Farage by being mealy-mouthed and sounding as if we half agree with him.

‘We won’t beat him unless we can inspire the millions crying out for a different direction. We won’t win if we sit on the fence about the most crucial issue that has faced our country for a generation.

‘Now that we know a bit more about what Brexit means, the very least that Leavers and Remainers deserve is a final say – a confirmatory referendum – on any deal.’

Mr Farage said he was planning a ‘northern attack’ in response to Labour’s change of heart over Brexit.

Last week a poll found his Brexit Party was in the lead on 27 per cent, with Labour on 22 per cent and the Tories on 15 per cent. Mr Farage told The Sunday Times: ‘My real challenge here is not the Conservatives. It’s that there are about five million people who voted Corbyn in 2017 and voted Brexit the year before, and I think that’s where I need to be.

‘My priority as leader is to go into the Labour heartlands. It’s my intention to go round south Wales, the Midlands, the North, and absolutely lay it out there, the extent to which they are being sold out [on Brexit] by Labour. I now intend to wholeheartedly target Labour lies and dishonesty in the weeks ahead.’

Responding to the challenge posed by Mr Farage and his Brexit Party, Mr Corbyn told the Sunday Mirror that Labour was not ‘worried about him’, dismissing his platform as ‘simple populism’.