Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage yesterday slammed Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal and accused a senior minister of “conceited arrogance”, as a row intensified ahead of next month’s election.
Johnson’s Conservatives have repeatedly rebuffed Farage after he urged them to abandon their deal with Brussels and form an electoral pact based on a “clean break” Brexit.
Farage told a rally of some 600 prospective candidates for the December 12 election that the Brexit Party is “100% ready to campaign for a proper Brexit” across Britain.
Johnson’s deal “is not Brexit and it does not get Brexit done,” Farage said, amid an intensifying war of words into which he has drawn US President Donald Trump.
Farage accused Conservative right-winger Jacob Rees-Mogg, Johnson’s leader in parliament’s main house, the Commons, of “conceited arrogance.” Rees-Mogg suggested to radio station LBC that Faraqe should “retire from the field” following a successful campaign for Britain to vote to leave the EU, in a 2016 referendum.
“What kind of conceited arrogance is this? There will be no Brexit without the Brexit Party,” Farage told his party’s election candidates.
He said the party would target an estimated 5mn Labour-voting Brexit supporters, after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he would campaign for a second referendum with the option of remaining in the EU.
John Curtice, a political scientist at the University of Strathclyde, told the BBC that he expects the Brexit Party to take roughly two votes from the Conservatives for every one it takes from Labour.
Farage added the election is likely to result in a hung parliament and the Brexit Party’s lawmakers could be kingmakers.
“It is likely, it is likely that we are going to have a hung parliament next time around so actually if the Brexit Party get a reasonable amount of people in there they could exert a great influence,” Farage told ITV. “May was kept in power by 10 DUP MPs.” 
Former prime minister Theresa May was dependent on Democratic Unionist Party lawmakers to govern after her failed bet on a snap election lost her party its majority.
Farage said he would hurt the opposition Labour Party “in the most extraordinary way”.
Meanwhile, according to an ICM poll published yesterday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives have a seven percentage-point lead over the opposition Labour Party ahead of the December 12 election.
ICM’s first poll of the election campaign put the Conservatives on 38% and Labour on 31%.
The pro-European Union Liberal Democrats had the support of 15% of those surveyed, while the Brexit Party was on 9%.The poll of 2,047 people, carried out online between November 1 and 4, shows a narrower gap than recent surveys from other pollsters, which have put the Conservatives between 8 and 17 percentage points ahead of Labour.
ICM said the survey showed the two main parties losing a similar proportion of voters over Brexit.
It said 11% of those voted Conservative at the last election in 2017 were now planning to vote for the Brexit Party, while 12% of those who backed Labour in 2017 intended to vote for the Liberal Democrats.
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