Farage: Labour and Conservatives Competing to Lock Down UK Hardest

Johnson
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Nigel Farage has criticised Labour and the Conservatives for competing with each other to lock down the country during the pandemic, with there being effectively no opposition in power to counter draconian social distancing measures.

“There are no easy answers to any of this, but what is remarkable is to see Labour and Conservative outbidding each other on how much we should lock down, and there has been no proper rational alternative debate. At least in Sweden, they’ve had this debate. At least in America, they have had this debate,” Mr Farage told Times Radio on Tuesday.

The Tories took the UK into lockdown twice, with Labour supporting the move in the House of Commons both times. Before the second lockdown, Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer had called for a three-week “circuit breaker” lockdown in October, criticising Prime Minister Boris Johnson for failing to impose more restrictions sooner. The four-week lockdown is expected to expire on December 2nd; however, the Labour leader has suggested that it should be extended further if the infection rate has not significantly lowered.

Times Radio host Carole Walker asked Mr Farage if in the spring’s local elections he would consider fielding candidates from his Reform UK party — a rebrand on the Brexit Party with a renewed focus on reforming British politics — which she hinted could potentially take conservative-leaning votes away from the Tories. Mr Farage pointed out that while ‘Conservative’ in name, the party of government was not ‘conservative’ in nature.

“I’m not sure if there is a ‘conservative’ party, really. I think it seems to be quite liberal under Boris Johnson,” Mr Farage said. While he said it was too early to say what direction his party would take the next time Britons headed to the polls, he remarked that in the recent weeks since the relaunch, people had come to him offering to join and run.

“The whole UK political system needs reform,” Mr Farage said, noting that it was not just in traditional local or national government positions that his candidates could stand, but for police commissioner roles. Naming one example of a leadership in need of reform, he referenced the instance of Kent’s Chief Constable Alan Pughsley bending the knee to Black Lives Matter — the Marxist group that wants to abolish the police.

“Something has gone wrong with the entire leadership of our country,” Mr Farage said.

Rebel Tory MPs have formed a new group, the COVID Recovery Group, which plans to put pressure on the prime minister over further coronavirus restrictions and will vote against any extension to the current lockdown.

However, such ‘rebels’ failed to materialise in substantial numbers to either protest the retrospective vote on social distancing and the pub curfew, or to stop the second lockdown, with just 32 voting against the government. With the Labour Party’s continued support of the Conservative prime minister, rebellion in such small numbers is unlikely to have a meaningful impact on the direction of the government’s coronavirus strategy.

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