Nigel Farage ramps up war with Tories with bombshell 'defect' letter to 1,300 councillors

The Reform UK brag has written to implicit 1,300 Tory councillors whose seats are up for grabs successful May's assembly elections giving them the "opportunity" to leap ship

Nigel Farage has escalated his warfare with the Tory Party by brazenly penning to hundreds of Conservative councillors urging them to defect.

The Reform UK person revealed helium has sent a missive to 1,352 informing the "vast majority" volition suffer their spot successful upcoming assembly elections. Mr Farage claimed the Conservative marque is "done" arsenic helium lashed retired astatine enactment contenders Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick.

In an added insult helium pretended to hide the latter's sanction successful a video posted connected societal media. It presents a monolithic headache astatine Conservative HQ, which hopes to claw backmost aft a disastrous General Election.

Mr Farage gloated: "There are 1,352 blimpish region councillors retired determination whose seats are up for grabs adjacent clip around. Interestingly, a immense fig of them genuinely hold with america and what we basal for. You see, the Conservative Party successful the state is precise antithetic to the Conservative Party successful Westminster."

Describing the contents of the letter, helium said: "You cognize successful your bosom of hearts that this is 4 years connected from highest Boris erstwhile the Conservative Party was doing well. And you cognize that the immense bulk of you are going to suffer your seats."

He said helium wanted to "give them the opportunity" to enactment themselves guardant for Reform UK instead. Candidates volition beryllium selected by the extremity of November, Mr Farage stated.

He said it is "actually irrelevant" whether Mr Jenrick oregon Ms Badenoch becomes Tory leader, saying: "The marque is broken. It's done. You can't betray radical consistently.

After the video was shared, a Tory spokesperson responded: “Reform has delivered a Labour authorities that has cruelly chopped Winter Fuel Payments for 10 cardinal pensioners and is present preparing to rise taxes contempt each their promises not to.

“A ballot for Reform this coming May is simply a ballot for a Labour council.”