Farage ambition to destroy Tories
But UKIP leader reveals he will quit politics... once he has got the 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 – 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 Canadianstyle Tory meltdown ‘could happen’ here – and 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 some- thing 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.’
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 voters have deserted the party is that they do not believe Cameron is Conservative.
‘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 blue-collar vote.’