ELLENA CRUSE 6 Dec 2019
In an interview with BBC's Andrew Neil, Nigel Farage said his party were "tearing chunks" out of the Labour vote and stopping the Liberal Democrat "surge".
Mr Farage announced in November that his party would not contest the 317 seats the Conservatives won in 2017, in order to help Leave-supporting candidates win.
During the 30-minute interview, Mr Farage denied being marginalised at the general election.
Mr Farage said: "I don't think if you came with me and visited some of the Labour heartlands in the north you would think that and I also think that what we've done is have a very dramatic effect on this election.
"I think, number one, the decision, difficult decision, I took in 317 seats to stand down.
"What that's done is that's pole-axed the Liberal Democrats. They were going to win in south London down through Surrey, right out to the west of England they were going to win a lot of seats if we'd stood. And I knew that wasn't the right thing to do."
Mr Farage said his party was the challenger in Labour-Leave areas in next week's poll.
It comes as three Brexit Party MEPs quit to support the Tories , saying the party will split the pro-Brexit vote.
Annunziata Rees-Mogg, Tory minister Jacob Rees-Mogg's sister - said it was "tragic" that the Brexit Party "are now the very party risking Brexit".
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Comments
Goldman Sachs is now betting on a huge multi year “Boris Brexit boom” and a surge of foreign fund flows into Britain if the election delivers a clear outcome, propelling much faster economic growth through the early 2020s than in the struggling eurozone!
Makes a complete mockery of the absolutely dire remainer propaganda Brexit ’forecasts’ of the UK treasury.
The US investment bank expects a “Brexit Breakthrough” and a catch-up surge in undervalued UK assets as one of its top seven trade ideas for 2020, advising clients to take the plunge on sterling and beaten-down equities in the domestic sector.
“We have identified more than 150bn of UK inflows that could be unlocked by some progress towards Brexit resolution. The upcoming election will reset the Parliamentary arithmetic and potentially clear the way,” it said.
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Goldman Sachs is closely watched by investors as the voice of global political finance. While coy about UK domestic politics, the bank’s optimistic scenario is implicitly-linked to a decisive Tory Brexit victory.
It expects the UK economy to roar back to life next year as pent-up investment kicks in lifting growth to a 2.4pc rate by the second half of next year. “Conditional on Brexit clarity and fiscal stimulus, our economists now look for annualised growth of 2.0pc in 2021 and 2.1pc in 2022,” it said.
Such performance would be double the pace of Germany and massively surpass the eurozone as a whole. It would alter the global narrative over the economics of Brexit.
“We see a compelling case for a rapid pick-up in UK growth. The election is likely to mark a clear turning point for UK fiscal policy on a bipartisan basis, and the end of fiscal consolidation should help the UK economy perform considerably better,” said Sven Jari Stehn, head of the bank’s European economics team.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farage-defends-decision-to-not-contest-tory-seats-in-the-general-election-a4306076.html
