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General election: Four Brexit party MEPs abandon Farage and urge voters to back Tories instead – live news
Parties out in force during final stretch ahead of 12 December vote, after two days of Nato drama 10.06am GMT The defection of four Brexit party MEPs (see 9.47am) still has not been formally announced, but the Brexit party itself has issued a response. It says three of its MEPs are resigning the whip. It says John Longworth already had the whip removed yesterday.In a statement Nigel Farage, the Brexit party leader, said:Whilst we are disappointed that four of our MEPs don’t seem to understand that we both saved the Conservative party from large-scale losses to the Liberal Democrats in the south and south-west of England but we are also hammering the Labour leave vote in its traditional heartlands, making it much easier for the Conservatives to win many of those seats. The only vote on the leave side that is currently being split is in areas such as Barnsley, the South Wales Valleys, Doncaster and Hartlepool, where there is a risk that the Tories will split our vote.We also note that one of the MEPs is the sister of a cabinet minister, another has a partner who works in the office of the same cabinet minister and yet another is a personal friend of both Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. In the case of John Longworth, who was for years the firmest advocate of WTO withdrawal that we have ever met, he underwent a metamorphosis into being a supporter of the new EU treaty following two days of meetings in London. We hope that Mr Longworth is well rewarded for his actions. 9.47am GMT According to a report by David Wooding for the Sun, four Brexit party MEPs will today announce that they are quitting their party and urging people to vote Conservative instead. One of them is John Longworth, the former director general of the British Chambers of Commerce and former Leave Means Leave chairman who yesterday had the whip removed because he had publicly criticised the election strategy being pursued by Nigel Farage, the party leader.In his report, which Brexit party sources are not denying, Wooding says Longworth and his colleagues fear that the Farage strategy could be putting Brexit at risk. He writes:Mr Longworth was unavailable for comment last night but an insider said: ‘We can’t support a party that jeopardises Brexit.‘Too many people are concerned about their own egos rather than the cause we have all been campaigning for: to leave the EU.The walkout follows weeks of vicious infighting among the Brexit party group in the European parliament.It was described by one as ‘a toxic battle between the old Ukippers and the old Tories’. Continue reading...
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