𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Nigel Farage’s mother wrote a cross letter to Boris Johnson in the wake of the 2019 election complaining about his lack of gratitude after her son’s Brexit Party stood down candidates in more than 300 seats so as not to split the pro-Brexit vote. A major new biography of the Reform UK leader reveals how both Farage and his mother Barbara, 80, were disappointed that the move wasn’t reciprocated with Tory candidates standing aside in seats where the Brexit Party might win.

In The Farage Factor, published this week, Lord Ashcroft reveals: “A friend of the family says: ‘Barbara was so cross that Boris Johnson didn’t have the courtesy to write a note to Nigel thanking him for acting in the national interest. And when Boris didn’t even bother to write back to her personally but got some flunkey in Downing Street to send a bog-standard reply, she was equally annoyed’.”

Farage’s Brexit Party had planned to stand in 600 seats but gave the Tories a clear run in 317 seats they had won two years earlier. As a result, Johnson found himself swept into Downing Street with an 80-strong majority and a mandate to “Get Brexit done”. But the perceived betrayal of pro-Brexit voters sowed the seeds of destruction that have damaged the Tory Party ever since, according to Lord Ashcroft’s book.

Indeed he also revealed that, had Johnson rewarded Farage with a peerage, it would almost certainly have spelled the end of his political career. “Farage has told friends privately that if Johnson had offered him a peerage after the election, there is a good chance he would have accepted it, thereby ruling himself out of any future political comeback,” writes Lord Ashcroft. “This missed opportunity to buy him off can be laid squarely at Johnson’s door.”

Analysis by the Tories suggested that, had Brexit Party candidates not stood in an estimated 20 seats where the right-wing vote was split, Johnson could have ended up with a majority of about 100. So had they stood in even more seats, the impact could have been huge.

“A case in point is Hartlepool, where Richard Tice stood as the Brexit Party’s candidate,” writes Lord Ashcroft. “His haul of 10,603 votes was nearly three times the majority of 3,595 by which Labour held off the Tories. Similarly, Ed Miliband and Yvette Cooper were two Labour politicians who owed their victory in 2019 to the Brexit Party.

“‘We thought the Tories might find a clever way of not standing in some other seats where the Brexit Party had a better chance, but they refused to help Nigel in return,’ says a close colleague of Farage. ‘Therein lies the reason Nigel would almost certainly never do a deal with the Tories again.’”

Lord Ashcroft’s book, published earlier this week, is the first major biography of Farage, 62. who is one of Britain’s most successful insurgent politicians. He is the only person in the modern era to have steered two different political parties to victory in successive national elections, topping the poll in the European elections in 2014 with UKIP and in 2019 with the Brexit Party.

With Reform UK currently flying high in the polls, many expect him to lead the party to victory in the next General Election.