Nigel Farage pledges Reform will go ‘double or quits’ on native elections with £5million spending blitz
Nigel Farage has vowed Reform will go ‘double or quits’ with a £5million spending blitz ahead of May’s local elections.
He admitted the elections will be a moment of reckoning for Reform, and that doubts will surface if the party’s poll lead is not transformed into results, but pledged: ‘We are just going to go for it.’
Reform’s election war chest was bolstered by a £9million donation in August from businessman Christopher Harborne, and Farage plans to spend most of that over the next four months.
One key strategy is direct mail to voters, with Reform having already sent more than five million leaflets to addresses in outer London and every household in Scotland and Wales.
The other front line is social media, where the party is energetically targeting disaffected voters who did not go to the polls at the last election.
Speaking to The Times, Mr Farage said he wanted to spend about £5 million on the campaign.
He said: ‘It’s double or quits. As far as I’m concerned we are just going to go for it.
‘If we come out of it without a single penny in the bank account and everyone is exhausted…
Mr Farage said May’s local elections is the most important event before the next general election
The Reform leader vowed to ‘go for it’ with a £5million spending blitz
‘It is the single most important event between now and the general election.’
Poor results for Labour in the elections in the Scotland and Welsh parliaments and English councils would likely increase pessimism around Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership.
Likewise, Kemi Badenoch’s position at the top of the Tory party could also be at risk if the Conservatives fall flat.
But Mr Farage – whose Reform party has enjoyed consistent national opinion poll leads since April last year – acknowledged he too was under pressure to deliver.
He continued: ‘On it depends the future of our Prime Minister, the future of the Leader of the Opposition and indeed my own relative strength or otherwise as leader of Reform.
‘If we bombed people would ask questions. My entire focus and energy is on the planning and preparation for it.’
Mr Farage swatted away suggestions that allegations of racism and bullying in his teenage years have damaged Reform, and even suggested they could be working in his favour.
A series of reports in the Guardian have presented allegations from his contempories – both students and teachers – at Dulwich College, the private school he attended in the late 1970s to early 1980s.
Mr Farage is focusing primarily on direct mail and a social media push
Farage also dismissed the allegations relating to his school years, insisting that if anything they are solidifying Reform’s support base
They include the claims that he told a Jewish classmate that ‘Hitler was right’ and said of Jews: ‘Gas them.’
Mr Farage insisted the allegations will not have an impact on Reform’s electoral performance because they have been perceived as a smear campagin by the ‘mainstream media’.
He said: ‘It’s having zero effect. It’s maybe solidifying our core support.’
The latest polls of voting intention have Reform at around 28 percent, ahead of the Conservatives with 20 percent, Labour with 18 perent, the Greens with 15 percent and the Liberal Democrats with 13 percent.
