PM rejects Nigel Farage’s offer of electoral pact, saying it could allow Jeremy Corbyn into No 10

This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

Boris Johnson faces the threat of battling against the Brexit party for leave votes in every seat across Britain, after Nigel Farage gave the prime minister a two-week deadline to drop his Brexit deal.

After a rocky 48 hours, which saw Johnson booed during a hospital visit and urged by Donald Trump to join forces with Farage, the Brexit party leader urged him to strike a “leave alliance”.

Play Video 0:47 Boris Johnson dismisses Trump and Farage's suggestion of pact with the Brexit party – video

Launching the Brexit party’s campaign in Westminster, the former Ukip leader claimed the deal agreed by Johnson in Brussels last month was “not Brexit”.

Farage said his message for the prime minister was: “Drop the deal because as these weeks go by and people realise what you’ve signed up to … people will not like it.

“Simply, it is not Brexit. What we’re doing here is kicking the can down the road.”

He suggested the Brexit party would be prepared to stand aside in a swath of seats – but only if Johnson axes his own withdrawal agreement.

In response the prime minister flatly rejected the idea of any electoral pact on Friday evening, saying a vote for any other party risked a Labour victory on 12 December.

“The advantage of our deal is it’s oven-ready, it’s there to go, you put it in, come back in the middle of December, and we get it done and Brexit is over the line,” he told the BBC.

Are the Brexit party's election targets a realistic ambition? Read more

Pressed about whether he would be prepared to strike any kind of deal with Farage, he said: “Now the difficulty about doing deals with any other party is that any other party, I’m afraid, simply risks putting Jeremy Corbyn into No 10.”

Johnson’s strategy for winning five more years in Downing Street is based on reuniting the leave vote that splintered between the Tories and the Brexit party in the European elections in May, by showing that he’s the man to “get Brexit done”.

However, that task could become significantly more difficult amid a Farage tour of the country saying Johnson’s deal is “not Brexit”. In May, Farage’s party topped the poll taking 31.6% of the vote against the Tories’ 9.1%.

Elections analyst Chris Hanretty, professor of politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, said: “It’s really quite straightforward – where the Brexit party stand they hurt the Conservatives much more than they hurt Labour.”

Farage castigated politicians’ “broken promises” at his campaign launch – including the prime minister’s “do or die” pledge to leave the EU on 31 October.

His speech followed Trump’s intervention on Thursday, with the US president suggesting to Farage on his LBC radio show that he and Johnson could form an “unstoppable force”.

Trump also claimed Corbyn would be “so bad for your country” – and suggested the US “can’t make a trade deal with the UK” under “certain aspects of the [Brexit] deal”, despite Johnson’s claims it would enable the UK to have an independent trade policy.

Farage said his party wanted a “clean Brexit”, essentially a form of no deal whereby the country would move on to World Trade Organization terms until it negotiated a free-trade agreement with the EU.

He said he was preparing to put up candidates across Britain, but was open to negotiation – and gave Johnson until 14 November to take up his offer.

Farage said there were 150 seats that the Brexit party want to target in northern England, Wales, the Midlands and potentially east London – areas the Tories traditionally cannot reach.

He said informal conversations about cooperating were already happening at a grassroots level in constituencies – and claimed he had discussed the possibility of a pact with officials in Downing Street, and at least one minister.

“Of course I’m open and flexible to local exceptions and already we are in communication with a number of MPs who are prepared to 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,” he said.

However, most analysts suggest the impact of cutting tariffs would be likely to be outweighed by the costs of losing frictionless access to EU markets.

Much of Farage’s campaign launch speech argued that Johnson’s deal was not a “true Brexit” because of what he claimed was the continued regulatory alignment with the EU, three further years of negotiation and abiding by terms set out by Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator.

A delay to Brexit was also preferable over Johnson’s deal, Farage suggested, saying the prime minister should decide to back a genuine free-trade deal such as the Canadian model, with no political ties, and give a 1 July deadline to the EU for this to be accepted.

Farage reserved some of his most stinging criticism for Corbyn’s party, in a sign the Brexit party is ramping up its campaign against Labour’s remain-backing MPs in leave-voting areas.

Asked how Labour voters would benefit from WTO terms and free-trade deals and the deregulation that comes with it, he said: “Cheaper food, cheaper bras, cheaper shows, cheaper everything – 12,500 everyday household goods that we buy – everything from underwear to shoes to food that are tariffed because of the common external tariff and our membership of the European Union.”