UK POLITICIAN NIGEL Farage has announced he will stand as a candidate in the country’s general election as the leader of the Reform UK party.

Posing a fresh threat to the Tories, the former member of the Conservative Party has taken over as leader of the right-wing Eurosceptic Reform UK party, formerly known as the Brexit Party.

Farage said he will stand as the Reform UK parliamentary candidate for Clacton, Essex, in the general election.

Announcing his candidacy, he said he had been left too little time to prepare when Rishi Sunak called a surprise election and had decided the “rational thing to do” was to “do my bit as I put it supporting the country around the party”.

He said that since then he had been talking to people on the streets and observed that “there is a rejection of the political class going on in this country in a way that has not been seen in modern times”.

Farage said he expects the Tories will be in opposition after the election.

He told a press conference: “They are split down the middle on policy, and frankly right now they don’t stand for a damn thing.

“So our aim in this election is to get many, many millions of votes. And I’m talking far more votes than Ukip can got back in 2015.”

He continued: “When people start to realise in the red wall, with Reform second to Labour, when they start to realise that actually in those seats, it’s a Conservative vote that’s a vote for Labour, it’s a Conservative vote that is a wasted vote, then I think we might just surprise everybody.”

He added: “We are appealing to Conservative voters, we are appealing to Labour voters.”