Nigel Farage: I’m planning new party to fight ‘my biggest battle yet’ for Leave if Theresa May fails Brexit The former Ukip leader said he is in talks with high-profile businessmen

Nigel Farage has said he is planning to form a new political party to fight “his biggest battle yet” if Theresa May fails to pull Britain out of the EU by March.

The former Ukip leader said he has been in talks for month over the party, which would contest next year’s European Parliament elections in May if the UK has not left the EU.

The Leave stalwart said he had stepped up preparations in the past two weeks for the platform, adding that it was his “destiny” to pull the UK out of our alliance with Brussels.

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It comes as the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement is expected to be defeated on Tuesday – a move which could kick Brexit further down the road or trigger a people’s vote.

Plug hole

“I am not going to lie down and watch it go down the plug hole,” Mr Farage told The Sunday Telegraph. “I couldn’t do that. And I won’t do that.

“If there are European Parliament elections I am standing and I am thinking about vehicles do to that. I will be looking to get some high profile figures. I’m talking about something very different. I have sounded out a few people.”

In fears that Mrs May would not pull off Brexit by the proposed date in March, Mr Farage added: “I sense within me I have not fought my biggest battle yet – that is how it feels. Whether it is happenstance, serendipity, destiny.”

The former Ukip leader said he believes there was a “55 to 45 per cent” chance of Britain still being in the EU beyond March. That would mean that Britain would take part in the European Parliament elections on 23 May, he predicted.

Mr Farage added that Britain’s withdrawal from the EU could be delayed by up to two years if our divorce from the alliance with Brussels got bogged down in a Parliamentary deadlock.

The staunch Leave figure is credited with putting the Brexit referendum on the table while he was at the helm of Ukip. In the 2015 General Election, Ukip won four million votes but not a single seat in parliament.

At the 2017 general election they won just 594,000 votes and no MPs.

Ukip

Mr Farage quit Ukip just days ago after it emerged that its current leader Gerard Batten hired far-right activist Tommy Robinson as a party adviser.

The party’s former leader said he had not planned a return to politics. He said: “My game plan had been to see Brexit through and move to America for four or five years. Trump is going to get re-elected so Washington DC is a good place.

“But I have always said that if the ball gets dropped on Brexit I will have no choice but to pick it up. It increasingly looks like that is the case.

“The reason we have got to where we are is cowardice in the Tory party. Those who I thought were on my side have been too cowardly. They have allowed everybody to do their worst.”