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Nigel Farage has axed his own red lines in negotiations with Boris Johnson - after his threats to stand against the Tories across the UK unless they killed their own Brexit deal flopped.

Last week, Mr Farage demanded the PM disavow his own agreement to avoid Brexit Party candidates standing against Tories up and down the county.

Speaking at their campaign launch he said: "Renounce the withdrawal agreement, to renounce the deal, and they themselves to stand on a ticket of a genuine free trade agreement or leave on WTO terms".

But on Thursday Mr Farage dropped that demand, demanding changes to the political declaration instead.

(Image: SIPA USA/PA Images)

Now, Mr Farage has said his party will stand 600 candidates in the General Election unless the Prime Minister removes the allowance for the Brexit transition period to last until 2022.

"Boris Johnson needs to make it clear that he will fundamentally change the political declaration in two ways," he said.

"Firstly that he will get rid of an extension that will allow it to go on until at least 2022.

"We need to have the clause in the political declaration removed so we have a hard deadline

"The second point is that we simply cannot, absolutely cannot, bind ourselves to a trade deal that gives us regulatory alignment that would prevent us from doing trade deals with the rest of the world and would mean we are not making our own laws."

Mr Farage added that his party also needed to see any promises on regulatory alignment removed so Britain was not "prevented from doing trade deals and making our own laws".

Pushed on Brexit Party candidates pulling out to back Conservatives, Mr Farage said it is usual for candidates to withdraw at the last minute due to the "huge amount of pressure".

Mr Farage added: "I've never fought an election at which at the last minute candidates didn't pull out because they realise firstly the full responsibility of doing it and secondly they are coming under a huge amount of pressure."