Why Farage not standing could actually be bad news for Sunak

Mr Farage announced on Thursday morning that he will not be standing on July 4 - Julian Simmonds/for The Telegraph

Nigel Farage’s decision not to stand in the general election is being celebrated at Tory HQ, but wiser heads will have seen the sting in the tail of his announcement that still spells danger ahead.

The honorary president of Reform UK has made it clear that he will “do my bit to help in the campaign”, and without a parliamentary seat to contest, he will occupy the nightmares of every Conservative with a small majority.

It is true that if Mr Farage had made a triumphant return as leader of Reform he would have given the Right-wing party an overall boost – and there are rumours that Mr Farage was serious about coming back, with talk that he was planning a big reveal next week.

According to one Westminster source, Mr Farage changed his mind when Mr Sunak announced the July 4 election.

If he had replaced Richard Tice as leader, Mr Farage would also have had to stand for election as an MP, meaning he would have been tied down to fighting a local campaign. He has done that seven times before, and lost every time.

Six weeks was not long enough

Part of Mr Farage’s calculation in deciding not to stand was, according to one well-placed source, a fear that six weeks was not long enough to mount a successful bid for a seat.

The bad news for the Tories is that by not standing, he can be dispatched to constituencies where Reform is closest to snatching seats, and help them make the breakthroughs that have so far eluded them.

Even if that does not result in electoral wins, the danger of Reform peeling significant numbers of voters away from the Conservatives – allowing Labour or the Lib Dems to storm through the middle – is considerable. The local elections earlier this month proved that theory.

Some Tory MPs had suggested that Mr Farage returning as Reform UK leader would be an “extinction level event” for their party. There was even talk of the Conservatives being wiped out in the same way as Canada’s ruling Progressive Conservative Party, which was left with just two seats after a calamitous general election in 1993.

Reform polling numbers up 7pc

They may, though, have underestimated the effectiveness of Mr Tice, who has improved Reform’s polling numbers from around 5 per cent a year ago to around 12 per cent now.

That is a remarkable achievement, and Mr Tice has no intention of cutting the sort of deal with the Tories that Mr Farage did in 2019, when he agreed a truce with Boris Johnson and did not contest seats that the Conservatives had won in 2017.

One crumb of comfort for the Tories is that Mr Farage is not expected to present his nightly GB News show for the duration of the campaign, denying him his main platform for speaking directly to voters.

Mr Farage’s decision not to stand also has significance for a potential Labour government.

The former Ukip leader is eyeing an unofficial role as a liaison between the US and the UK if Donald Trump wins the presidential election on Nov 5, a role he will be free to take up if he is not an MP.

If Sir Keir Starmer wins on July 4, he may find himself having to negotiate with Mr Farage, whether he likes it or not.

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