BREXIT PARTY LEADER Nigel Farage has unveiled the over 600 candidates that will run in the UK’s next general election, in the latest measure of growth of the newly formed party.

The Party has revealed that it has vetted 635 people for its approved candidate list for election, which is 15 candidates short of ensuring the party can fight every seat.

“We managed to turn all that anger that was out there in this country into optimism and hope,” he said at an event today called ‘We Are Ready’, in preparation for a general election that Farage himself said he expected in the autumn.

“The British people have made up their minds and we will not be changing it.”

The Brexit Party was formed in January 2019, in the wake of Nigel Farage leaving his former party Ukip after it became “too extreme”. In the UK’s European elections, the Brexit Party won a 31.7% share of the vote, and failed to win its first seat in a recent bye-election in Peterborough. 

The Brexit Party is seen to be competing for the Tory party’s voters as it becomes increasingly fractured over Brexit-related issues. The Brexit Party’s views are more extreme, favouring a no-deal Brexit above all-else.

“A clean break Brexit on 31 October is by far the most popular option in this country,” Farage said today. “No deal is the best deal, it’s the only acceptable deal.”

He called Theresa May “the worst and most duplicitous Prime Minister in British history”, said that he’s “pleased that Boris Johnson has brought some energy and optimism to that job”, and welcomed Johnson’s pledges to take the UK out of the EU by 31 October “do or die”.

Boris Johnson, I would say to you: deliver, or politically die.

He said that May “impressed me I have to say at her Lancaster House speech. She said that they would leave by 29 March” which then turned into an extension until 31 October. Farage then he asked “Can you trust Boris Johnson on this issue?”

Even without the backstop, this is the worst deal in history. 

Farage decried the £39 billion Brexit divorce bill, and that the Withdrawal Agreement would leave the UK under the jurisdiction of the European Courts of Justice for the next eight years.

I thought from the very beginning that the acid test for Brexit would be we take back what is rightfully ours. We take back our territorial waters, the management of the fish stock, and hand them back to the British fishing industry… and this Withdrawal Agreement does not take back our territorial waters, and that is unacceptable. 

“We would not be able to make changes to state aid rules”, Farage continued, using British Steel as an example. The company went into liquidation in May this year after talks with the government collapsed – around 3,000 jobs are at risk.

“With this Withdrawal Agreement we would be unable to stand up for British Steel and that makes it unacceptable,” Farage said, while also blaming the “impotent government”.

In a statement that drew a rousing round of applause and a standing ovation from the assembled crowd, Farage said:

The Withdrawal Agreement is not Brexit, the Withdrawal Agreement is a betrayal of what 17.4 million people voted for, and if Mr Johnson you insist on the Withdrawal Agreement we will fight you in every single seat up and down the length and breadth of the United Kingdom! 

Farage also said that he suspected that efforts of opposition parties to stop a no-deal Brexit in parliament “would fail”, naming each of the parties engaged in talks with Jeremy Corbyn and prompting booes from the audience on each. 

Brexit is the defining political issue of our age. Our simple message is this: we are ready.