NIGEL FARAGE’S BREXIT Party has applied to the British Electoral Commission to change its name to Reform UK.

The party contested 275 seats and took 2% of votes but did not succeed in electing an MP in the 2019 general election.

It will now broaden its agenda to include coronavirus and seek “reform” in other areas.

Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, party leader Farage said the British government’s approach to Covid-19 has been to “terrify the nation into submission”. 

He claimed that lockdowns don’t work, and do more harm than good.

He said that the UK should adopt an approach that is being practised “to a large degree in Sweden”, and claimed his party would act against the “consensus thinking and vested interests on Covid”. 

Farage also made a number of claims around the number of people who experience severe illness or death from Covid-19 in the article as he urged a change in approach. 

Chairman Richard Tice added: “The need for major reform in the UK is clearer now than ever.

“A new approach is essential, so that government works for the people, not for itself. The most urgent issue is a new coronavirus strategy, so that we learn to live with it, not hide in fear of it.”

With reporting from PA