Conservative MPs are already engaged in “civil war” following the party’s devastating defeat at the General Election, according to Nigel Farage.
Asked if some Tory MPs were considering joining Reform UK, he told GB News: “They’re already in civil war. The election result, the ink is barely dry on the paper and they’re at war.
“You have people like Suella Braverman, people like the Father of the House, Sir Edward Leigh, who say, ‘oh, we must welcome Nigel into the Conservative Party’.
“And then you have the other wing, which is David Cameron, William Hague, and a big majority of the 121 MPs who would want nothing to do with me or with Reform.
“I’m being used at the minute as part of the argument, in the middle. But the truth is it’s a broad church, the Conservative Party – with no shared religion of any kind at all.
“They will go into, I suspect, a lengthy period of internecine warfare. They are not an effective political force.
“Can five MPs in the House of Commons make a difference? Well, in the Commons itself, we can make arguments, but it’s in the country where I’m going to be campaigning, right up to the local elections next year and on to the Welsh parliament elections, in the years to come.
“I think we have a major opportunity to build a mass movement grassroots organisation, and that’s where the opposition will come.”
He said he was not disappointed with five Reform being elected as MPs: “Breakthroughs are never disappointing. The breakthroughs are always good.
“The first-past-the-post system is absolutely brutal. We could have got over 4 million votes and no seats under this system, if we had PR we’d be nearly 100 seats.
“The appetite for electoral change is going to come. For every one Reform MP there are 800,000 votes behind them. For every Labour MP fewer than 30,000.
“First-past-the-post can stop parties with big vote shares getting a small number of seats. But equally, it can get the Labour Party with a third of the vote, two thirds of the seats. The argument for electoral reform is going to become very strong.”
He was asked if the Liberal Democrats had been in touch about reforming the system: “No, they haven’t been but I’d be perfectly happy to work with them on it. It’s been something they’ve campaigned for decades.
“Sadly, when Nick Clegg had the chance over a decade ago, we had a referendum on a system that wasn’t proportional, it was preferential and couldn’t be explained in a sentence…
“There is a clear majority of the British public who now think the system doesn’t work. These results prove the system doesn’t work.
“And actually the low turnout shows you that just so many people can’t see the point of taking part in these elections.”
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