Pro-Brexit, anti-immigration campaigner Nigel Farage stepped back into front-line British politics on Monday, announcing he will take the helm of the right-wing party Reform UK and run for parliament in the July 4 election.
Farage said he will run in the seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea in his eighth attempt to win a seat in the House of Commons. The announcement came just days after Farage said he would not be a candidate because it was more important to support his ally Donald Trump in the US presidential election in November.
While Farage stands a chance of getting elected on July 4, he acknowledged that his larger goal is to lead the “real” opposition to a Labour Party government if the governing Conservative Party loses, as many expect.
I can’t turn my back on those millions of people who followed me, believed in me. I’ve changed my mind because I can’t let down millions of people
Farage said he wanted to lead a “political revolt … a turning of our backs on the political status quo”.
He is aiming to repeat the populist political pressure that pushed for, and then won, a 2016 referendum on taking the UK out of the European Union.
“I can’t turn my back on those millions of people who followed me, believed in me,” Farage said. “I’ve changed my mind because I can’t let down millions of people.”
Farage also said he would take over as leader of Reform, successor to the Brexit party. That role has been held since Reform was founded by Richard Tice, with Farage serving as honorary president.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s centre-right Conservatives, who have been in office for 14 years, are battling a widespread sense that voters want change. On July 4 voters across the UK will elect lawmakers to fill all 650 seats in the House of Commons. The leader of the party that can command a Commons majority – either alone or in coalition – will become prime minister.
The favourite is Labour leader Keir Starmer, who pledged on Monday to keep the UK’s nuclear weapons as he seeks to dispel criticisms that his centre-left party is soft on defence.
His campaign is centred on his claim to have transformed the party since he replaced Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time opponent of nuclear weapons and critic of Nato, as Labour leader in 2020.
“My commitment to the nuclear deterrent is absolute,” Starmer said on Monday during a campaign appearance at a military museum in Bury, northwest England.
“Nobody who aspires to be prime minister would set out the circumstances in which it would be used. That would be irresponsible, but it is there as part of a vital part of our defence, so of course we would have to be prepared to use it,” he said.
Britain has been a nuclear power since the 1950s, and both Labour and Conservative governments have consistently supported atomic weapons. Since the 1990s, Britain’s nuclear deterrent has consisted of four Royal Navy submarines armed with Trident missiles.
Starmer said a Labour government would build the four new nuclear submarines that the Conservatives have already committed to. He criticised the Conservatives for defence spending cuts that had given the UK “the smallest army since the time of Napoleon”, the French leader who fought Britain 200 years ago.
He said the world had entered “a new age of insecurity” and “national security is the most important issue of our times”.
The schism between pro- and anti-nuclear forces was long a fault-line in the Labour Party. It was Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s Labour government that developed atomic weapons in the years following the Second World War, making Britain the world’s third nuclear-armed state after the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Starmer said his entire top team shared his commitment to the nuclear arsenal, even though several members, including deputy leader Angela Rayner and foreign affairs spokesman David Lammy, voted against renewing Trident in 2016.
He also pledged that a Labour government would increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, though he has not set a deadline. Sunak maintains his Conservatives will meet the target by 2030.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said Starmer had delivered “another empty speech”.
“By refusing to commit to 2.5 per cent defence spending by 2030 he has been unable to show the clear and bold leadership this country needs in uncertain times,” Shapps said.
