General election: Brexit Party’s Nigel Farage will not stand to be an MP for the eighth time
Brexit Party leader also claims Tories offered him a number of ‘baubles’ including a peerage
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Your support makes all the difference.Nigel Farage will not attempt to become an MP for the eighth time, as he has revealed he will not stand in December’s election as a candidate for the Brexit Party.
Last week Mr Farage issued an ultimatum to Boris Johnson, urging him to drop his deal or face Brexit Party candidates in every seat across Britain at next month’s general election, but refused to be drawn on his own future.
However, appearing on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Mr Farage said: “I’ve thought very hard about this, how do I serve the cause of Brexit best, because that’s what I’m doing this for.”
He continued: “Not for a career, I don’t want to be in politics for the rest of my life. Do I find a seat to try and get myself into parliament or do I serve the cause better traversing the length and breadth of the United Kingdom supporting 600 candidates, and I’ve decided the latter course is the right one.
“It’s very difficult to do both. It’s very difficult to be in a constituency every day and at the same time be out across the United Kingdom.”
Mr Farage, a former leader of Ukip, has previously ran seven times for parliament – the latest being in 2015 when he failed to beat the Conservatives’ Craig Mackinlay.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, the Brexit Party leader also claimed he had been twice offered a peerage, one of a number of “baubles” put forward by the Conservative Party to stop his party fielding candidates.
In relation to peerages, he said: “This happened twice, but we are going back a couple of months. They thought the deal was that if I accepted that, we would only fight a few seats.
“That came from two very close sources – one from an adviser and one a minister, not a member of the cabinet, suggesting this was the right thing to do. I said I was not interested.”
Mr Farage also said he hoped there would be a “Leave alliance” at the election on 12 December, adding: “It seems obvious to me that no one party can own Brexit voters, there are Tory voters, there are Brexit Party voters and a lot of Labour Brexit voters.
“I always thought that to win an election, get a big majority so we can get a proper Brexit, a coming-together would be the objective. I still hope and pray it happens but it doesn’t look like it will.”
Just moments earlier, the prime minister had effectively rejected Mr Farage’s plea for a pact at the election, telling Sky News’s Sophy Ridge programme: “I’ve ruled out a pact with everybody because I don’t think that it’s sensible to do that.”
“We’re proud of our beliefs, we’re proud of our one-nation conservatism,” Mr Johnson added.
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