Nigel Farage Should Not Be Allowed to Rejoin Conservative Party, Says Deputy PM Dowden

MARYLAND, UNITED STATES - FEBRUARY 23: Former Member of the European Parliament and former
Hollie Adams/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said on Sunday that Nigel Farage should not be welcomed back into the Conservative Party, despite Prime Minister Sunak claiming that the party is an “open tent” and former Prime Minister Liz Truss expressing enthusiasm about the Brexit leader potentially returning to the party.

Confusion reigns supreme within the Conservative Party yet again as top figures within the party openly debate whether Nigel Farage should be allowed back into the party after leaving in 1992 after then-Prime Minister John Major signed the Maastricht Treaty which formalised the European Union as it is known today.

Mr Farage went on to lead the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and championed the campaign to undo Britain’s decision to join the bloc during the EU Brexit Referendum of 2016, following which he challenged the Tories with his Brexit Party, which has since been rebranded to Reform UK.

While Mr Farage has shut down the idea of rejoining the Conservatives with their current agenda, which he has claimed more resembles a social democrat party’s rather than a small-c conservative agenda, the Brexiteer has left the door open to returning after the next general election.

According to all major polls, Sunak’s Conservatives are likely heading towards an electoral wipeout of historic proportions and may possibly be inclined to return to more Thatcherite principles favoured by Farage after the expected defeat in a reset back to first principles.

However, Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said: “I, like many hundreds of thousands of Conservatives up and down the country, have spent many years campaigning against parties led by Nigel Farage – so no, I don’t support Nigel Farage rejoining the Conservative Party.”

The comments from Dowden are perhaps not so surprising given that he comes from the globalist wing of the Tory Party and opposed Brexit during the 2016 referendum.

However, the sentiment expressed by the deputy prime minister comes in conflict with the position laid out by his boss, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who said last year when asked if he would allow Farage to rejoin the party that the Conservatives have “always been a broad church” and would therefore be open to the idea. Even so, this messaging may have been more about trying to welcome back old-time Tory voters who defected to UKIP — not an insignificant number of people at all — rather than Mr Farage himself.

More recently, last week former Prime Minister Liz Truss expressed enthusiasm about having one of the most consequential political figures of his era join the party, saying that she would “like [Fargage] to become a member of the Conservative Party and help turn our country around.”

Yet despite the internal squabbling over the future of the Brexit boss, it is far from a foregone conclusion that he would rejoin the party even if he was offered. Mr Farage has currently ruled out rejoining the party so long as long as Rishi Sunak is still leader but also said that he would not “rule out” potentially trying to take over the party after the election.

For now, Farage and his political ally, Reform UK leader Richard Tice, are seeking to inflict as much pain upon the Tories as possible and ensuring that the party faces a major electoral defeat over its failures to govern conservatively on issues such as taxation, the green agenda, and most notably on mass migration.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on X: or e-mail to: kzindulka@breitbart.com

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