If you back Brexit, Farage is the worst person to vote for

FROM the very start of this Election, Boris Johnson needs to make it plain that the Brexit Party has nothing to offer those who wish this country to leave the EU. Worse, Nigel Farage’s movement could actually help the pro- EU forces who still hope to prevent Brexit from happening at all.

Mr Farage seems to be having a moment of vanity, offering an ‘alliance’ to the Prime Minister in return for abandoning his hard-fought deal. Has Mr Farage got above himself? Is he overestimating his i nfluence on events? Has he forgotten his original aim?

Let us not forget that the Prime Minister’s deal has secured the fundamental purposes of the Eurosceptic movement, t he cause to which Mr Farage has devoted so much of his life and energy. Does he really think that, given the political balance at home and the negotiating power of the EU itself, he could secure anything better? In any case, after all we have been through, it is politically and practically preposterous to suggest starting all over again.

As his old ally, Arron Banks, warns him in The Mail on Sunday today: ‘What is the point of doing something if you can’t win? And he risks splitting the vote in some seats and letting a Lib Dem through the middle to win – a party which wants to cancel Brexit altogether.’

We could not put it better ourselves, and we also endorse Mr Banks’s prediction that a good

Tory majority is the best route to a good trade deal with the EU, once we are out of it.

But this is not a guaranteed outcome and there is simply no room for the sort of personal self- aggrandisement that Mr Farage is indulging in.

The polls may currently look good for the Tories, but in an Election such as this, with so many major issues at stake, they may give a gravely misleading impression.

Mr Johnson and his aides are far from complacent and know very well that this contest will not be a gentle walk in the park. In many marginal Southern seats, where anti- Brexit sentiments are strong, pro-Brexit Tory MPs cannot be sure that they can beat off the challenges from proBrussels Liberal Democrats.

And the Tories are going to have to do very well to capture new seats – as they hope to do – in the Brexit-supporting North of England, where Labour has let down its many anti-EU voters.

And then there is the danger of a Labour surge, driven by false claims that the Tories plan to sell the NHS – the key issue in every UK Election – to American businessmen.

The chanting of ‘Not for Sale’ at Labour rallies is curiously reminiscent of the similarly mindless repetition of ‘ Lock Her Up!’, referring to Hillary Clinton, at Trump rallies, which Jeremy Corbyn and his allies claim to despise. Forget chlorinated chicken. This sort of rabble- rousing i s an i mport from the USA which all wise people will want to keep out.

Corbynism remains as nasty as it has been from the beginning, tainted with antisemitism, seething with futile envy of the successful, soft on terror, tricky on Brexit – and so devoid of real new ideas for solving the country’s undoubted problems that it still reaches for the discredited policies of failed socialist regimes around the world.

This is no time for clever games or tactical voting. This is a time for a strong, clear Tory victory.