Swaggering Farage says: Now I will destroy the Tory party
In a crowing interview on the campaign trail, the UKIP leader reveals he will quit politics... once he’s got UK out of the EU
RAMPANT Nigel Farage aims to destroy the Tory Party, take over a new Right-wing British political party, get Britain out of the EU – and then quit politics.
The UKIP leader’s breathtaking ambition, revealed in an interview with The Mail on Sunday, comes hours before he is set to achieve a historic victory in the European elections.
The results from Thursday’s polling, announced today, are expected to show UKIP will have gained more than 20 MEPs, more than the Conservatives, with the possibility of a total wipeout of all Lib Dem MEPs.
But Mr Farage rejects claims by David Cameron that UKIP’s challenge will fade away in next year’s General Election, and says today’s gains mark the beginning of the end of the Conservative Party.
He aims to repeat the destruction two decades ago of Canada’s Conservative Party, when the rebel Right-wing Reform Party, compared by many to UKIP, sparked a political earthquake.
In an interview with this newspaper earlier in the campaign, Mr Farage said a Canadian-style Tory meltdown ‘could happen’ here – and
‘Fundamental issues ignored for too long’
compared attacks on him to those on Reform Party leader Preston Manning and Reform’s first Canadian MP, schoolteacher Deborah Grey.
‘They called him a Right-wing extremist, a nutter, away with the fairies, he’ll never get anywhere and what happens? They won one by-election, a schoolmistress way out West, who resisted every bribe and temptation to rejoin the Conservative Party.
‘Now you have a Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who was first elected on a Reform ticket, as were half the Cabinet.
‘Don’t think this can’t happen here. The public want something different. We are catalysing a big change in British politics on fundamental issues that have been brushed under the carpet and ignored by a completely out-of-touch career political class for too long.’
Canada’s Conservative Party was destroyed overnight in the country’s 1993 election by the populist, lowtax, Reform Party.
The century-old ruling Progressive Conservatives lost all but two of their 156 seats after sensational gains by Reform, which had been called racist, sexist and homophobic, just as David Cameron famously called UKIP ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’. The split in Canada’s Centre Right enabled the Liberals, Canada’s equivalent of our Labour Party, to take power.
But after ten years of infighting, the Reform revolution succeeded. The Canadian Alliance, a merger of Reform with the ruins of Canada’s old-style Tories, led to former Reform official Stephen Harper becoming Prime Minister in 2006.
And it had all started with the victory of a sole Reform MP, Ms Grey, in 1989. Mr Farage hopes a victory by UKIP’s Roger Helmer in the Newark Parliamentary by-election on June 5 will trigger a similar political shake-up at Westminster.
In his interview with The Mail on Sunday, Mr Farage dismissed jibes that the rise of UKIP will hand power to pro-EU Ed Miliband at the next General Election by taking votes from the Tories. He said: ‘The arithmetic doesn’t suggest that. Firstly, the reason Conservative vot- ers have deserted the party is that they do not believe Cameron is Conservative. It’s got nothing to do with me, but thinking there is going to be a Conservative majority is fantasy.
‘The second reason is the Tories are dying as brand in the North of England just as they did in Scotland. The third reason Cameron can’t win a majority is he can’t get the bluecollar vote. Thatcher got it, Reagan got it, John Major got it. But these two guys (Cameron and Osborne) who allegedly don’t know the price of a pint of milk, don’t connect with the blue collar.’
While Farage says publicly an Ed Miliband victory next year would be a ‘disaster for the economy,’ some of those who know the UKIP leader well claim that in private, he says it could help him achieve a Canadianstyle upheaval here. One UKIP aide
‘A Tory majority? That thought is a fantasy’
said: ‘If Miliband wins, the Tories would be shattered and split with Eurosceptics on one side and Europhiles on the other. Nigel could team up with the Eurosceptics and possibly lead them. And, if, as Nigel believes, Miliband would be a pathetically poor PM, a Labour Government could collapse quickly with another election. Then, the Canadian scenario is on.’
Mr Farage aims to use UKIP’s new support from Labour voters to force a weakened Ed Miliband to take a tougher stance on the EU in next year’s election. ‘If I want to get this country out of the EU, I have got to change the position of the Labour Party on the referendum. If you accept it is impossible for Cameron to win a majority on his own, there could be a UKIP-Tory coalition after the election. Who knows? If it looks
less and less likely that Miliband can form a majority without a referendum pledge, he’ll do it.’
Farage, 50, insists he is not interested in power for himself – and by the time he turns 60, wants to have quit politics – with Britain out of the EU.
‘I will consider my job’s done and I would be very happy to hand over to people who might be very good at running the country. I’m in politics because I want to change things, not because I want a career. I don’t want to do this for ever, I don’t want to sit here in ten years’ time, I want to be doing something else by then, in the media, radio, writing, hopefully enjoying myself.’
He has no desire to move into No 10, emulating ‘Canada’s Nigel Farage’ Stephen Harper. ‘I think I could do it but do I think that’s really what I would be best at in life?
‘No. What I’m best at is spotting when something’s wrong and needs to change and agitating to wake people up to what’s gone wrong.’