Farage has announced that he'll be making an announcement...

[Westfacing]

... an 'emergency' announcement, no less.

Presumably to announce he's finally plucked up courage to put his money were his big mouth is and stand for Parliament, after bottling it!

@BloodyHellKenAgain - I really, really hope you’re right about Trump! Yes, Farage likes to stay ahead of the game and on the best side for his own ends, so it maybe that he’s breaking ties, which would be best for me not seeing their double act at least! I would assume that this would be for the ‘optics’ and popularity reasons - I’m not convinced Farage would break them on moral grounds, just because Trump is a convicted felon, at least not if he could see a way to keep capitalising on the association. Maybe it will become apparent why he’s not gone to support him.

Clacton voted heavily for Brexit - I wonder if it did them any good, and how they feel about it now.

I don't know the place but I can't imagine that's it's thrived in the past eight years.

And when people realise that a vote for Labour means that they are taxed into oblivion then there will be a massive swing and Reform will win at the next GE 😊

See the fascist and racist right = 'the light' - just like 'the light' of the 1930s in Germany. I feel sick.

The line “making Britain great again”.

The Telegraph is ecstatic. Cannot help but feel that the Conservatives, with their multicultural cabinet have got this utterly wrong. Whatever is left of them that is.

But the Conservatives haven't persuaded Farage to run again so how have they got it 'utterly wrong'?

Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings
(Both the original and the William Orbit Dance remix!).

Amongst many odious things that he had said was a particularly distasteful “joke” about fags that I don’t really want to repeat.

I watched his announcement. Whatever you think of his politics (I disagree with most of it) he is the clearest, most powerful communicator in politics at the moment by a mile and he seems to be on a mission. Quite worrying.

What a ridiculous melodramatic response.

Perhaps if you had to live in places like Clayton you would realise why Farage is attractive

We have a fairly low rate of income tax and consequently a bundle of public services that are on their knees.

Personally, I wouldn't mind paying more tax in order to have public services such as the NHS. I rather like being able to be mended when I break. And I realise that it costs money for this to happen.

If your point is that the Labour Party may not administer what they collect any better than the Conservative Party, that is a different discussion, however they could hardly be worse at it.

His strength is he’s a v good talker …he’d run rings around Starmer and Rayner…he’s tuned in to what people want to hear…the gender issues and mass unchecked immigration...
it’s all a mess…

Don't we currently have the highest tax ever under this Tory government?

What does he have to offer them?

He gave them Brexit - are they happy with the results of that?

Same here.

I guess we will find out - presumably he chose Clacton as a relatively sure thing. It’s been absolutely obvious he’s going to go for the Conservatives and secure their core vote for ages. Not enough for a majority but enough to disrupt.

Peston just tweeted this, it's very interesting

"The Tory Party’s response to Farage taking direct control of Reform and becoming the Clacton candidate is to fundamentally misunderstand him.

A Tory spokesman warns he is handing Starmer a blank cheque by undermining the Tories. But Farage said on the Peston show last week that he could not care less about the damage to the Conservatives, because he is convinced they have lost, with or without the challenge of Reform.

Farage is contemptuous of the Conservative Party. He told me the election was already effectively over - and the latest YouGov MRP poll suggests Sunak has more than a mountain to climb - such that Labour would inevitably win.

With that conviction, all Farage cares about, he said, is that the right wing in politics should regroup and rebuild in the aftermath.

He said he does not want to reconfigure and rebuild the Conservative Party from within, whatever Tory MPs say about welcoming him to their ranks.

He believes the Tory Party will break up, and that Reform is therefore the vehicle by which a right-of-centre party will rise again.

He also said that there is no way he can be bought off by Sunak, since he broadly believes the country went to the dogs after he stood down candidates in 2019 for Boris Johnson.

The only deal Farage would contemplate, he said, would be Tory candidates being forced to stand down by Sunak in favour of Reform. That is never going to happen, he conceded.

So an election campaign that initially looked like the PM paddling in a small boat into a storm now looks like him heading straight into a hurricane."

https://x.com/peston/status/1797670222406775036?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g

I agree with this
In my area (red wall) there are some extremely right-wing Labour voters who would have voted Labour but may well switch to Farage because middle-class Labour don't really have much to offer traditional Labour voters.

I think he will get elected, Richard Tice and maybe Lee Anderson, but unlikely to be any others.

As long as he wins his seat that is all that matters. If his party receives around 15-20% of the total vote it puts him in a strong position to influence right wing opposition after the GE.

Yes but this is priced in. You can see Labour have shifted to chase southern middle class voters. They will be successful. Labour learned a hard lesson from 2019 that you can’t win without the English middle class; and the Tory Party seem to have forgotten that themselves.

Farage said he stood aside to let Boris win and no one thanked him from the tories. He was clearly hurt by that.
So he's going for the jugular.

He got brexit through so he will succeed I think in getting in…then the gloves will be off. I think he has a wider appeal more than people want to admit …

Agreed. His ticket is why bother with the politically correct Conservatives when you can go Reform? Conservatives do not have an answer on that one. They are toast