Nigel Farage leaves door open to re-joining Tories after election
- Published
Nigel Farage has been welcomed with open arms by many Conservatives in Manchester - leading some to wonder if he could re-join the party after decades of campaigning against it.
On Sunday night, the former UKIP and Brexit Party leader was cheered to the rafters at a gala dinner for grassroots Conservatives, after Priti Patel hailed his role in delivering Brexit - and helping Boris Johnson win the 2019 general election by standing candidates down.
Then he received a hero's welcome from right wing Tories' at Liz Truss's conference fringe event on Monday. Footage of him partying with Ms Patel later that night has been widely shared on social media.
Having observed Farage-mania at close quarters at this year's conference, Tory commentator Tim Montgomerie said: "I'm convinced party members would choose him as leader if they could.", external
Mr Farage told BBC News he has been "overwhelmed" and "gobsmacked" by the reception he has had, which he says proves Tory activists are "desperate for ideas, desperate to believe in something".
This is the first Tory conference Mr Farage has attended since 1988. He was "utterly barred" from the annual gatherings when he was a leading light in UKIP, he says, although he often used to turn up anyway.
On one memorable occasion in Manchester he rolled up to the security gates in an armoured personnel carrier, to show he was "parking his tanks on the Tories' lawn". Subtle it was not.
Farage parks his tank outside the 2006 Tory spring conference
Mr Farage tore up his Tory membership card in the early 1990s in protest at then leader John Major signing the Maastricht Treaty, which created the European Union. He then became a founder member of what would become UKIP.
Since leaving frontline politics after the 2019 election he has become a presenter on GB News, allowing him access to the conference as a journalist.
His friend Jacob Rees-Mogg told the BBC's Politics Live Mr Farage has always been a Tory at heart and suggested the party should "roll out the red carpet" if he ever wanted to rejoin.
Greg Hands and Jacob Rees-Mogg are asked about Nigel Farage at the Tory conference and if they want him back
Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands seemed deeply unimpressed with this idea, saying the former UKIP leader had campaigned against the Tories for years and did not want them to succeed.
Rishi Sunak dodged the issue when asked if Mr Farage could ever be allowed back in, telling GB News: "Look, the Tory party is a broad church. I welcome lots of people who want to subscribe to our ideals, to our values."
Mr Farage told the channel he could not join a party that had "put the tax rate up to the highest in over 70 years", allowed net migration "to run at over half a million a year" and not "used Brexit to deregulate to help small businesses".
Speaking later to the BBC, he said he would not join the Conservative Party "as it currently is", but added: "Never say never.
"If after the next election they reset and realign then I might."
But maybe the Tory party shouldn't start printing a new membership card yet.
One long-term ally of Mr Farage was sceptical about whether he would ever return to the Tory fold.
"There is no way he would ever join the Tories after the way they have treated him," he said.
"He just enjoys winding them up."