Brexit Party: Labour ‘Worried’ About Farage Takeover of Heartlands

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 23: Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn listens to spe
Leon Neal/Getty Images
Victoria Friedman

Sources within the Brexit Party have said that the Labour establishment’s mood in their Leave-backing constituencies is “absolutely febrile” due to fears Nigel Farage will wipe them out in the December 12th General Election.

A Brexit Party spokesman told The Telegraph in comments published on Tuesday: “I know for a fact that the Labour establishment in Wales and the northeast, especially Durham, are really worried.”

“Of course we will have an impact on the Tories, but without a shadow of a doubt, we can take seats from Labour because in bars and cafes across the country voters are laughing at their Brexit stance — they haven’t got one, and that is absurd,” they added.

Breitbart London reported on Monday on how, in recent decades, Labour had abandoned its traditional Eurosceptic position and embraced the metropolitan liberal elites’ fetishism of the European Project. Despite declaring the party would respect the 2016 EU referendum result in his 2017 manifesto, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced in July that he would support a second referendum.

Turning its back on working-class Labour Leavers, the party could lose seats in the North, Midlands, and Wales — not to the Conservative Party, but the Brexit Party, particularly in constituencies where people are reluctant to vote for a right-wing politician.

A study released last month revealed that while 11 per cent of Labour Leavers would consider voting Tory, nearly one-in-five, 18 per cent, said they would vote for the Brexit Party. Labour MP Caroline Flint warned in June that her party could lose as many as 40 seats in an election to Mr Farage’s party.

The Brexit Party has an estimated 450 candidates that it is prepared to field up and down the country. While the party maintains that the offer of an alliance with the Tories still stands, that depends upon Prime Minister Boris Johnson abandoning his EU-approved exit deal and pursuing a clean-break Brexit instead. Otherwise, the party says it will challenge even the Conservatives in their seats.

This raises concerns over splitting the Brexit-backing vote and handing a Remain party a victory. One Brexit Party source told the newspaper: “If we decide to be messianic and put up candidates all over the country, we’ll pull away some of the votes from the Conservative Party and it’ll put their chances in jeopardy which would lead to no Brexit.”

Others have suggested the party concentrate on a few dozen seats, with The Telegraph saying that it has been informed the party is targetting specifically Caerphilly and Newport in Wales, and Redcar and Sunderland in northeast England. A source said that while “the diehards want us to stand everywhere”, “some are urging Nigel [Farage] only to stand in 50 seats”.

John Longworth, Brexit Party MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, has said the party should be “sensible” and focus on around 20 Labour Leave seats.

“I think it is important for us to be sensible. I think we ought to be targeted in terms of the number of seats that we decide to address,” Mr Longworth said in comments reported by The Times.

“I can imagine that might be 20 or 30. They would be entirely winnable then if you poured all your resources into them. You probably would not get any more if you concentrated on the 600. But you would also get a better result for Brexit too,” he added.

However, a party source told the newspaper of record that it would continue with its strategy to field 600 candidates across the country.

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