The MP for Clacton also predicted that there would be between 20-30 pro-Gaza MPs at the next election and derided his Conservative opponents as ‘boring old b*******’
March 28, 2025 11:47
Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage has insisted it now has tougher vetting criteria for candidates than either Labour or the Conservatives and vowed there would be no repeat of the scandals that rocked the party at the last election.
During the general election last year, the JC reported that Reform candidates had posted links to antisemitic videos by the conspiracy theorist David Icke, shared claims that Israel was behind 9/11 and suggested Greta Thunberg is “controlled” by “Rothschild handlers”.
However, the party’s leader – who was elected to Parliament last year at his eighth attempt – insisted that such scenes wouldn’t be repeated.
Speaking to a lunch of the Westminster press gallery, he said: “At the last election, Reform was an embryonic organisation. If Richard Tice [the party’s deputy leader] hadn’t kept his bank account open it wouldn’t have even existed.
“It didn't have any vetting at all. In fact, it just said ‘Oh come all ye faithful. Anyone who wants to stand for us, just come and stand’. Very, very different now.”
Farage, who represents Clacton in Essex, added: “We've applied much, much stricter vetting criteria for local election candidates than under the Conservatives and Labour Party.
“And will you find someone who tweeted something at some point? You will. But will you find somebody who persistently has said things that you find fundamentally offensive? No, you won't you absolutely.”
“Because we’ve worked blooming hard at this and because we know you'll [the media] hold us to a higher standard than everybody else. And that's fine.”
The JC has previously reported on a growing number of British Jews who are drawn to Farage’s outfit, despite the prior comments of some of its candidates.
Elsewhere, Farage described Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer as a “very decent human being” but said he thought “project Starmer” was in “big trouble”, having got “a third of the vote and two thirds of the seats” – referencing the fact that Reform claimed just five seats despite winning over four million votes.
And he sought to pile pressure on Labour ahead of the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, for which Reform is very much in the running according to the latest polls.
“Truth is, it's Labour’s 16th safest seat in the country. It's a must win by election for Labour. We're going to run them close,” he said.
The Reform leader also speculated that the left-wing vote could fragment even further ahead of the 2029 general election and that more Greens and pro-Gaza independents would be elected as a result.
“You might have noticed how the Greens have become very much more professional” he said, adding: “My thinking is they'll win more [seats] at the next election.
“Their voters are millennials like my daughter, who's a hard left greenie, until she asks for money from daddy every single month”, he joked.
Adressing the rise of what he called the “pro-Gaza vote”, Farage went on: “I have little doubt, given the demographic change, if the next general election is in 2029 that the pro-Gaza independents, or whatever they call themselves then, they're not going to win four seats, plus Corbyn, they're going to win 20 or 30 seats.”
Intriguingly, despite speculation about a future alliance of the right between Reform and the Conservatives, Farage showed now reticence in putting the boot into Tories, joking that leader Kemi Badenoch worked “very hard in the afternoon for a few hours”.
His ire, though, was mainly directed at the party’s parliamentary cohort: “You want to see this mob in the Commons. I've never met a more stuck up, arrogant, out of touch group of people that at least half the Conservative MPs. Stuffy boring old b****** – and that is on the record.”