Nigel Farage ready to lead Britain’s ‘right wing’ with collapse of legacy Conservatives and Trotskyites

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Reform UK leader Nigel Farage (photo), who appears to be at the inflection point of overtaking the centuries-old Conservative Party as the major party of the British right says he would even consider taking over the Tories and incorporating them into Reform.

As Farage has repeatedly said in the past week the question is not now who will form the next British government, but rather who will have the important job of opposing it, and who will challenge it for power at the next election in 2029, or before. In normal times of Britain’s legacy two-party system this would be the Conservatives who are presently in power, but they have upset their own voters so badly, there is a developing feeling the party deserves to win zero seats and to vanish for good.

That would leave Mr Farage as the leader of the opposition, he hopes. He told LBC: “We need a coherent voice of opposition in Parliament, and in the country. And do you know what… I believe I can do that better than the current Conservative Party”. Separately this week, he had said: “They’re done, they’re toast and they thoroughly deserve it in my opinion”.

Pressed on whether he would consider leading the Conservative Party itself by the host, Farage demurred but accepted he’d be willing to lead a merged Reform – Conservative party, an outcome not unlike the Canadian example where the legacy Conservatives were defeated by the Canadian Reform Party, before the two merged.

Farage said of such an outcome: “they may be dead. They may well be dead, this may well be the end of their journey. I would be prepared to lead the centre right in this country, a centre right that stands up for small business, a centre right that believes in border, a centre right that isn’t scared of standing up for the British people”.

Farage has always been eager to point out that his parties and political causes — like Brexit, UKIP, and now Reform — have pulled votes in from the left, as well as the right. And this reflects a growing trend around the world, like with Trump in the U.S. and populists in Europe, where new movements or new alliances have brought in working-class communities who traditionally voted left but now see controlling immigration as a major policy issue being ignored by legacy parties.

And one of the most blunt tools of the old establishment to maintain their power against rising populist sentiment is fast losing its potency, Farage claimed. On the instinct to call any deviation from the approved norm ‘racism’ to discredit those involved, Farage told The Telegraph: “This has been the left’s technique, those who want to break down the idea of country, of borders, the old Trotskyite ideal that we’re all global citizens. What they do is to attack anyone who stands against it.

“And most of these problems [open borders, etc] are caused not by the left, but by Conservative cowardice. The sheer cowardice of those in the Conservative movement — your sort of David Cameron, George Osborne lot who want to be popular, invited to the right dinner parties in Notting Hill, that sort of thing.”

It used to be the case such attacks worked, Farage, said, but now: “it’s changing. I think there is a very, very big change. I used to hear [accusations of racism] ten years ago. There is an awakening, an understanding that debating these things is legitimate, so things have changed.”

The latest YouGov voting intention survey, conducted 12-13 June, has Reform UK one point ahead of the Conservatives on 19% to 18%.