Nigel Farage has announced he will run as Reform UK’s candidate in Clacton, after previously saying he would not stand in July’s general election.
The former UKIP and Brexit Party leader said he had changed his mind after spending time on the campaign trail, adding he did not want to let his supporters down.
The Essex seat, which was the first to elect a UKIP MP in 2014, has a Conservative majority of 25,702.
Mr Farage also revealed he was taking over from Richard Tice as Reform’s leader for the next five years.
He’s been doing his calculations on what gives him the most leverage in some future move - possibly just leveraging this for more cash but I wouldn’t put it past him to be trying to wreck the Tories (I am in favour of that) in a bid to end up running them (A Bad Thing and the road to fascism). Also Russia may have stumped up some cash to mess with us.
edit: I suppose the play could be: become MP, get begged to run the Tory Party (as who else is there? Penny Mordaunt?), merge the parties, turn around their fortunes with a populist right wing agenda, defeat Starmer in the next GE and then fascism for all, possibly in parallel with Trump naming himself dictator in perpetuum.