Nigel farage

I have lost count of the number of times the Conservative Party has thought it has shot Nigel Farage’s fox. They stretch all the way back to David Cameron’s January 2013 pledge to hold an In/Out EU referendum, and include the party’s as yet unfulfilled summer promise to stop the illegal Channel crossings and its delivery of a trade deal with the EU that honours the fundamentals of Brexit. Given that the Covid vaccines have also taken some of the sting out of the lockdown debate, which the former Ukip leader was poised to exploit, many Tories will have felt able to relax a bit about the challenge on their right-flank.

It will be some days before the full character of the Brexit trade deal and other future partnership arrangements with the EU become clear. The smoke and mirrors that often accompany budget statements surround this deal as well, and we must wait for expert analytical eyes to go through the body of the 500-page text and tell us what troubling details lurk inside it. But nonetheless, the very striking of a deal which can be argued to observe Boris Johnson’s basic red lines and bring an orderly switchover of trading arrangement stymies those who were seeking to catastrophise the final phase of Brexit.

Richard Tice is tall and lean, has a hint of Imran Khan around the eyes, and the ladies on reception in the office building where we meet seem to like him. Were Jilly Cooper to write a political novel then he would be its hero rather than anti-hero. Tice was, after all, the clean-cut one in the ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’, a band whose line up was completed by Arron Banks, Andy Wigmore and Nigel Farage. Tice is the chairman of the Farage-led Brexit party, a title he is finding irksome this afternoon as he would much rather by now be chairman of Reform UK, the new identity he and Farage have applied to the Electoral Commission (El Com) for. They applied more than six weeks ago and have heard nothing back, even though El Com told them they could expect a decision by now.

The terms of the Covid debate have changed markedly since Nigel Farage decided to re-enter the political arena after Boris Johnson's second English lockdown. Even with multiple vaccines coming on stream, we can still not rule out a third lockdown — but we can be pretty darned sure there won’t be a fourth. It’s not the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end. So Farage and his chief lieutenant Richard Tice can no longer depend on anti-lockdown fervour alone to give them a flying start, despite the rebellious mood of Tory MPs. Could they, therefore, decide that discretion is the better part of valour and call the whole thing off, especially if there is no Brexit deal and Britain ends up going for WTO rules as they have called for?

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is a useful stop for journalists looking for some rust-belt Americana not too far from New York. The city feels a bit like a museum. Not so long ago, Bethlehem Steel was one of the biggest steel and ship-building companies in the world. Today the vast mill, which shut down in 1995, is a cultural events centre. Next to the mill is a replacement economic hub for Bethlehem — the Wind Creek mega-casino. My colleague Matt and I spent a couple of days in and around west Bethlehem, Northampton County. Northampton voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016. Last week, by less than 1 per cent at last count, it chose Joe Biden. It is a ‘bellwether’ county. It rained for most our stay.

During the 2015 general election campaign, when I was directing operations at the London HQ for Ukip, I had an 'absolutely brilliant' idea. The next day Nigel Farage would be campaigning on the Isle of Thanet, in Kent, where he was standing for election. On our grid, it was earmarked to be Small Business Day – designed to showcase the party’s manifesto focus on the self-employed and SMEs, aka 'the backbone of the British economy'. My plan? During his campaigning, Nigel should visit a butcher, a baker and a candlestick-maker (as mentioned in the nursery rhyme ‘Rub-A-Dub-Dub’). A suitable butcher’s shop and a bakery near to his route were swiftly identified.

The idea of a flotilla of little ships crossing the English Channel from France to deposit their beleaguered human cargo safely on our shores was born in this country’s darkest hour during the second world war. To say that the method behind the success of the Dunkirk evacuation 80 years ago has been repurposed for the modern age is something of an understatement. These days the little ships are usually inflatable dinghies packed with desperate young men from Asia and Africa who seek to evade this country’s immigration laws. They land at various points between Dover and Hastings and – if undetected – many head for rendezvous points pre-arranged with people traffickers for onward transit to London and other major cities.

Despite the consistent poll lead and projections of a majority of about 40 seats, the Tories are still nervous. They are nervous because they are uncertain, because their route to victory involves taking seats that the Tories haven’t won in living memory, so no one has a proper sense of how well (or otherwise) it’s going. The debacle of the last general election campaign has left the Tory party with a collective fear of terra incognita. At the start of that campaign, there was talk of the Conservatives sweeping through the Labour heartlands, but instead they had a lesson in how badly campaigns can go wrong. The Labour vote is resilient, and there is scepticism even among the cabinet about some of the places that the Tories are trying to take this time.

Will a Leave alliance lead the Tories to victory in the snap election? Nigel Farage has today announced that the Brexit party will be unilaterally creating one. The Brexit party leader rowed back on an earlier plan to stand candidates in 600 seats. Instead, the Brexit party will focus its efforts on Labour-held seats. Speaking from Hartlepool, Farage said he would not field candidates in the 317 seats won by the Conservatives at the 2017 general election. Explaining his change of heart, Farage pointed to a Twitter video Boris Johnson released on Sunday night in which he clarified his commitment to no transition extension and to the UK diverging from the EU in any post-Brexit trade deal. https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1193562889484951552?

Boris Johnson – I'm 'sorry' we did not meet our Halloween deadline Sophy Ridge began her show with a pre-recorded interview with Boris Johnson. With the intended Brexit date of 31st October now receding into history, Ridge challenged the Prime Minister over his repeated promises to meet that deadline, and asked if he would apologise for failing to deliver on his commitment: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1190911959744598016 SR: Are you sorry? BJ: Yes, absolutely! SR: Will you apologise to all those Conservative members who voted for you...? BJ: Of course... It is a matter of deep regret, but what we need to do now is get on and do it... Only this government offers a deal that is ready to go, and a way of delivering it.

Never knowingly undersold. The slogan of one of our best-loved retailers could equally be applied to Nigel Farage. Despite poll ratings softer than a collapsing souffle, the Brexit party leader had Britain’s political media exactly where he wanted them today: in a state of feverish excitement about his general election plans. With the kudos of that Donald Trump radio scoop confirming his status as a great political showman, there was sufficient suspension of disbelief in the air for Nigel to be able to make an offer to Boris Johnson of a “Leave Alliance”. This was predicated on the Prime Minister ditching his painstakingly agreed new Withdrawal Agreement on the grounds that “it isn’t Brexit”.