At a New Year’s press conference yesterday, Reform UK leader Richard Tice unveiled Brexiteer stalwart Ben Habib as his party’s candidate in the crunch Wellingborough by-election.
Mr Tice described his candidate as “one of the strongest Brexiteers in the country” whom voters in the strongly pro-Brexit constituency could be confident would defend their interests in parliament.
Speaking at the central-Westminster press conference, Mr Habib won laughter from the audience when joking: “My initial aim when I announced my rejoining of Reform UK in March last year, was the obliterate the Tory Party”.
“They’ve beaten me to it!”
He added it’s no longer sufficient just to beat the Tories at the General Election, but Reform must “lead the way and get seats in parliament”.
Speaking to the Express after his unveiling, Mr Habib said the “sky’s the limit” in the Wellingborough by-election, and that a victory for Reform UK would be a “politically seismic event”.
How confident are you about the by-election?
I think the honest answer is ‘who knows?’ Let’s see what happens. But if I can engage with the people of Wellingborough, if I can get the message across that voting either Conservative or Labour is just going to result in more of the same rubbish that they’ve been fed for the last 13 years – or worse – I think they will come across and they will vote.
The challenge here is to get the small-c conservative vote out, and the small-c conservative vote includes Labour voters too. There are many Labour voters who are small-c conservatives.
They want to be proud of this country, who want the working class promoted, who want taxes cut back, who want to get rid of this ridiculous march towards Net Zero; and if we can engage with that lot as well as the disenfranchised traditional Conservative voter, then the sky’s the limit!
What would success in the Wellingborough by-election look like? UKIP won around 19 percent in 2015…
If I get 10 percent of the vote, at least I’ve achieved the polling results. If I get more than that, that’s a tick in the box and ‘Ben Habib did good’.
But if I can win, then I mean that’s a politically seismic event actually.
Will Nigel Farage be joining you on the campaign trail?
I hope so.
Have you spoken with Peter Bone at all? There were rumours he might be getting involved with Reform.
I haven’t spoken to him, no, though I did text him this morning as a matter of courtesy to let him know that I’m standing.
What would success in the Wellingborough by-election look like? UKIP won around 19 percent in 2015…
If I get 10 percent of the vote, at least I’ve achieved the polling results. If I get more than that, that’s a tick in the box and ‘Ben Habib did good’.
But if I can win, then I mean that’s a politically seismic event actually.
Will Nigel Farage be joining you on the campaign trail?
I hope so.
Have you spoken with Peter Bone at all? There were rumours he might be getting involved with Reform.
I haven’t spoken to him, no, though I did text him this morning as a matter of courtesy to let him know that I’m standing.
Would it detract from your campaign if Mr Bone were to stand as an independent candidate?
It’s up to Peter Bone to do what he wishes to do, it’s not for me to comment on it.
Would it detract from your campaign if Mr Bone were to stand as an independent candidate?
It’s up to Peter Bone to do what he wishes to do, it’s not for me to comment on it.
He’s been a great Brexiteer, though I don’t want to get caught up in discussing what he may or may not have done from a parliamentary standards perspective.
Peter Bone is his own man, but we’re gong to be fighting our campaign and getting our message out.
You said 12 seats is your target for the General Election, have you any idea what sort of areas you’re looking at? Are you going for the Red Wall, or disenfranchised home county seats?
It’s such a febrile political environment. People are so upset with the Government and they know Labour are a disaster, they know the Conservative Government’s a disaster.
With the exception of the Liberal Democrat seats, I think you can target everything!
Talking of the LibDems, if you were elected by the people of Wellingborough would you work with Labour and LibDem MPs in parliament to push for proportional representation?
Well one of our policies is PR. I used to be a great fan of First Past The Post, but it hasn’t delivered good government has it?
We’ve had 25 years of rubbish that has brought the United Kingdom to is knees.
So even though I think culturally people are wedded to First Past The Post, I think they need to wake up to the fact that it isn’t working.
So yes we will be pushing, not just that reform but for lots of parliamentary reforms that are required, which may not be foremost in people’s minds, but in order to get this country working properly you do need to reform the way the parliamentary system works.
