If he’s a true patriot, Farage must make a personal sacrifice on behalf of his country

Nigel Farage is a man of his word. Or is he? Only six weeks ago, when asked by the Sky News presenter Sophy Ridge if he would stand for a parliamentary seat in a forthcoming general election, the Brexit Party leader was unambiguous: ‘Yes, of course i’ll stand and i will lead the charge on behalf of the Brexit Party.’

He has done the opposite. Mr Farage is not standing.

To use his own military analogy (appropriately on Armistice Day), he is like an officer hiding in the trench while sending his troops over the top.

in the same spirit (or lack of it), Mr Farage at the weekend abandoned a scheduled return appearance on the Sophy Ridge On Sunday show. We know this because she tweeted on Saturday that he had ‘pulled out’.

That’s a pity. it would have been interesting to see Mr Farage responding to her inevitable first question: what happened to your promise six weeks ago? Perhaps the Brexit Party leader didn’t fancy his chances in such an encounter.

He has, though, explained it elsewhere, arguing he did not want to be distracted from the nationwide campaign. Boris Johnson, however, seems able to walk and chew gum at the same time: he is leading the Conservative national campaign while simultaneously fighting his Uxbridge seat, now counted as a marginal.

it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the real reason Nigel Farage is not standing in the election is he has decided he has very little chance of winning a seat. That is based on experience: Mr Farage has failed on no fewer than seven occasions to win a Westminster seat.

Split

Bear in mind that he could have chosen to fight any seat he liked, since he is effectively the owner of the Brexit Party. (it is incorporated as a limited company, and Mr Farage, along with the chairman Richard Tice, has the controlling share.)

But if the great general Farage doesn’t have much hope of winning even the most auspicious constituency on December 12, what chance does any of his poor bloody infantry have of winning one?

And if, as is most likely, none of them does, what would be the only significant effect of the Brexit Party standing in every constituency in england and Wales, as Mr Farage says it will?

All the most experienced analysts of British electoral trends have said the most likely consequence is that seats which might otherwise be won by the Conservatives will instead go to labour or the liberal Democrats.

in other words, his party will split the pro- Brexit vote and ratchet up the chances of Jeremy Corbyn entering 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister on what would be a most unlucky Friday 13th next month.

That’s a recipe either for no Brexit at all, or a rigged referendum between a Brexitin-name- only — Mr Corbyn’s preferred option — and Remain, which is what every other member of the labour Shadow Cabinet wants. No wonder the obsessively anti- Brexit newspaper, The New european, has hailed Mr Farage as ‘Remain’s secret weapon’.

Nigel Farage insists the Brexit Party is more likely to take labour votes than Tory ones, and claims he is much better placed to capture labour leave voters than is Boris Johnson.

However, the fact that he deliberately chose a Conservative- style blue for his party’s logo suggests his ambition was always to pull in voters from the Right.

He was devastatingly successful in that endeavour in the european Parliament elections in May. The Brexit Party topped the poll with over 30 per cent of the vote, while the Conservatives, under the doomed Theresa May and with her own eU withdrawal deal in political ruins, got just 9 per cent (by some distance the worst national electoral vote ever recorded by the party).

Since Mr Johnson took over, and especially since he negotiated a new withdrawal deal with Brussels, the Conservatives’ poll ratings have rebounded spectacularly — but that may well still be insufficient to gain a parliamentary majority if the Brexit Party stands across the country.

As Professor Matthew goodwin, the author of Revolt On The Right, wrote last week: ‘ The bottom line is that the Conservatives need as many Brexit Party supporters as possible. if they get them, then they will likely win a comfortable and possibly large majority.

‘However, if Mr Farage has a good campaign and Conservatives start to flow the other way to the Brexit Party, then the chances of Boris Johnson getting his cherished majority are sharply reduced. There is all to play for.’

Suspect

And the pre-eminent psephologist Sir John Curtice observed yesterday, when discussing recent polling evidence: ‘Just as many labour leave voters have switched to the Conservatives (19 per cent) as have moved to the Brexit Party (18 per cent).

‘Against that backdrop, the claim that the Brexit Party can win over traditional labour voters who would never contemplate voting Tory looks somewhat suspect. There is little evidence to support the view that Mr Farage is damaging labour more than the Conservatives — and plenty to the contrary.’

Farage’s central claim — and the only ostensible reason why the Brexit Party is preparing to fight every seat — is that Boris Johnson’s deal ‘is not Brexit’. if that were truly the case, then there could be no argument with Farage’s strategy. But his claim is bogus — as bogus as his recent promise to stand for Parliament in this election. Martin Howe QC, who set up the proBrexit group lawyers for Britain — and who was as savage a critic of Mrs May’s deal as Mr Farage — has set out with compelling clarity the crucial differences.

‘Boris Johnson’s deal is miles better than Theresa May’s ghastly capitulation,’ Mr Howe wrote. ‘The Political Declaration has been amended so that it foreshadows a Free Trade Agreement under which the UK will be able to operate its independent trade policy instead of the UK being locked into the eU’s external customs tariffs.

‘References to the UK aligning its rules to eU rules have been deleted . . . Further, unlike the May deal, it becomes realistic for the UK to walk away from the longterm negotiations with “no deal” at the end of the transition period.’

Victory

This explains why Angela Merkel, the german Chancellor, has stated that while under Mrs May’s deal ‘it was not clear whether there would be membership of the Customs Union’, under the Johnson deal ‘it is quite clear that great Britain will be a third country’.

‘Third country’ is the term the eU uses to describe countries completely outside the structures of its own customs union and single market.

But Mr Farage still complains that before we leave in full, the Johnson deal ‘allows for endless extension’. That, too, is an untruth. The treaty provides for, at most, a two-year extension if a trade deal cannot be struck by the end of 2020.

No wonder many Brexit Party supporters are pleading with Mr Farage to declare victory rather than fight a self- destructive, futile battle. As is his former brotherin-arms, the biggest financial backer of the leave campaign, Arron Banks, who wrote yesterday: ‘A Remain Alliance government is an all-too-realistic prospect, and if Brexit is lost because the vote is split, Nigel will have destroyed what he has spent years working to achieve.’

Perhaps it is the events of those years that have warped Nigel Farage’s judgment. While Mr Farage had campaigned for Brexit for a quarter of a century, Boris Johnson came on board only in 2016 — and that was because he believed his ambition to lead the Tory Party required him to be on the leave side in the referendum.

Not only would that referendum never have happened without Mr Farage, it was the threat of the Brexit Party which caused Tory MPs to vote in such overwhelming numbers for Mr Johnson to be their leader in place of Mrs May.

So it must really hurt Mr Farage to see Mr Johnson carrying off the Brexit laurels, while distancing himself totally from the man who made it all possible.

But i take Mr Farage to be a patriot. in this week, of all weeks, he should make the required personal sacrifice for the sake of his country — and stand his army down. Yet i fear he is too selfish and egotistical.