DOWNING Street has flatly ruled out an electoral pact between the Conservatives and the Brexit Party after appearing to entertain the idea at the weekend.
Number 10 said Boris Johnson would “not be doing a deal with Nigel Farage” after the latter took out full page press adverts offering an alliance in order to maximise the number of Leave MPs elected.
The adverts said: “Let’s have a clean-break Brexit - we will help you secure a big Brexit majority and destroy Corbyn’s Labour. Together we would be unstoppable.”
The Brexit party want Mr Johnson to withdraw his candidates from 80 to 90 seats where traditional Labour voters are unlikely to elect a Tory.
In return, the Brexit party would step aside in Tory seats and Tory targets.
Without a pact, the Brexit and Tory parties may split the Leave vote, helping Remain candidates win.
However the adverts could also be teeing up a ‘betrayal’ attack on Mr Johnson if he tries to deliver a soft Brexit rather than the no-deal demanded by Mr Farage.
It was reported yesterday that the PM has told rebel Tory MPs that the Eurosceptics on the Tory right would be putting “spears in my back” when they saw his compromise plans.
On Sunday, Chancellor Sajid Javid repeatedly refused to rule out a deal with Mr Farage, saying merely that the Tories didn’t need an alliance.
However Number 10 bluntly ruled it out yesterday and there were attacks on Mr Farage and the Leave campaign funder Arron Banks.
A senior Conservative source said: “Neither Nigel Farage nor Arron Banks are fit and proper persons and they should never be allowed anywhere near government. All our experience of dealing with them leads us to believe that”.
Mr Farage tweeted that the remarks “look like comments from deep inside the bunker”, adding: “I do not want a job in government. I just want to put country before party and deliver a clean break Brexit.”
In an online ‘People’s PMQs’ event last night, Mr Johnson ruled out a border down the Irish sea as the way to deliver Brexit, an idea rejected by Theresa May and the DUP in case it fractured the Union, but which had been gaining traction with Ireland.
He said: “The backstop is going to be removed, I very much hope. That is what I insist, because that’s the only way to get a deal.
“The UK Parliament will not accept the current withdrawal agreement. There’s no way that is going through. We will not accept, either, a Northern Ireland-only backstop. That simply doesn’t work for the UK. We’ve got to come out whole and entire, and solve the problems of the Northern Irish border, and I’m absolutely certain that we can do that.”
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