Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage has said the Tories “deserve to be wiped out”, as the seven times failed election candidate moots a return to electoral politics.
It comes as the hard-right GB News host hit out at new immigration figures, with a rise in numbers meaning “the conditions for a new insurgency in British politics are ripe,” the Brexiteer claimed to supporters in a Telegraph piece.
He added that he is considering taking a “more active role” in Brexit Party successor Reform UK, where he holds the largely ceremonial role of president.
The move will rattle the Tories as a Reform party surge could further trash Conservative election prospects, taking votes from them as Labour builds a thumping lead in the polls.
Mr Farage said: “Whether I take a more active role in Reform UK in future will depend on the extent of the betrayal of Brexit.”
The Brexiteer was commenting on figures showing a rise in net migration to 504,000 people in the year to June, with the end of lockdown restrictions and a rise in refugees fleeing Ukraine raising the tally.
The former City of London trader’s allegations of “betrayal” over Brexit stem from the Tories’ failure to lower the numbers. But business leaders are pushing for visa rules to be relaxed, allowing more workers from abroad to plug skills shortages that have crippled sectors from logistics to farming and construction.
Last week, immigration minister Robert Jenrick said the UK would not ease immigration rules to plug the workforce gap, with the new PM fearing a backlash from backbenchers and the party grassroots.
And Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer told business leaders at the CBI Labour this week he’d wean businesses off their “immigration dependency” if PM. The shift in tone led Nigel Farage to declare that “Labour are now to the right of the Tories on immigration”.
There are over 1.2 million jobs to be filled this month in the UK and the NHS is struggling with record levels of vacancies.
Mr Farage’s hints of a lurch back into party politics would also rattle Reform UK, currently at around eight per cent in the polls and led by Brexiteer businessman Richard Tice.
Nigel Farage got less than a third of the vote in his best parliamentary performance in the 2015 general election, in the Kent constituency of South Thanet. That was at the peak of Brexit fervour, and Reform UK would struggle to pick up any seats in Westminster.
Reform UK has claimed that in the two weeks after doomed ex-PM Liz Truss was booted as Tory leader, nearly 5,000 new members signed up.
