Most Tory members say they want Nigel Farage to join the party

Farage said he will be 'very surprised' if he is not Tory leader by 2026
Nigel Farage
PA
Ethan Croft6 November 2023

Londoner's Diary

Good news for Nigel Farage, the former Brexit party and UKIP leader who thinks he will be in charge of the Conservative party by 2026.

A new poll of Tory party members by the Conservative Home website shows over 70 per cent of them would happily have Farage back in the party if he sought membership. How many would vote for him to be their leader?

Farage quit the Conservatives in 1992 in protest at John Major's decision to sign the Maastricht treaty, which created the modern European Union.

Last month in Manchester Farage attended his first Tory conference in years. He was technically there as a member of the media because he has a show on GB News. But he seemed to be on political manoeuvres.

During the conference, prime minister Rishi Sunak was asked whether he would welcome a Farage return. “Look, the Tory party is a broad church. I welcome lots of people who want to subscribe to our ideals, to our values,” he said.

Following the PM’s noncommittal response, Farage told PoliticsHome: “I’d be very surprised if I were not Conservative leader by ’26.” His odds are looking good.

Trussworld

Conservative Party Conference 2023 -  Day Two
Liz Truss
Getty Images

Another spectre of the Tory right haunting the PM is Liz Truss. How is she keeping a year after her short reign as prime minister? Quite happily, according to new figures which show in her first six months out of power she withdrew £23,000 from her official allowance. Former prime ministers are entitled to £115,000 a year to meet the costs of “their special position in public life”.

Truss keeps an office in central London and regularly makes speeches to the faithful. At Conservative party conference last month she packed out a room with her speech about how to “revive Conservative values”.

She has been jetsetting, too. According to a new profile of Truss in The House, a Westminster-based magazine, her security detail are chuffed with her travels, which have taken them as far as Hawaii. She got a rapturous reception in Washington DC recently. Soon her book Ten Years To Save The West will be published. We wonder if it will make Rishi Sunak’s reading list.

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