Nigel Farage has hinted he is undecided on whether to make a return to frontline politics saying it “could go either way”.
Farage made the comments during an interview with the Sunday Times where he said “desperate” Conservative Party MPs contact him several times a day to ask what he is doing in the 2024 General Election.
During the interview, the former Brexit Party leader said he was “not saying I’m back” but said politics for him was about “what could we do? What could we change?” adding “the state things are in today, the country is not in a good place, nothing works”.
On the subject of regular messages from Tory MPs Farage told the Sunday Times: “They’re looking for something, they’re desperate. I’m Uncle Nige. They all want to know what I’m going to do.”
He said some Conservative MPs wanted to join Reform UK if he became leader, while others wanted him to become leader of the Conservative Party.
He said MPs at the Conservative Party conference he attended last year, his first since quitting the party in 1992 treated him “like the prodigal son returning”.
Farage added in the Sunday Times interview: “A lot of people who are engaged in the Tory party now got engaged in politics through me, through Ukip.
“So many of them have become Tory councillors, the activist base has been redefined by the grassroots base Ukip developed and a lot of the 2019 Tory MP intake are basically Ukip, make no bones about it.”
He predicted a wipeout for the Conservatives at the next election and said the two main things stopping him from rejoining were the chances of the party’s Central Office refusing him membership and his life with girlfriend Laure Ferrari.
He said the leader of the opposition role “is a five-year-or-plus commitment” adding that it would “effectively end my working life”, while teasing that his future could remain on GB News where he felt he could “reshape the national conversation”.
During the interview, Farage spoke about potentially becoming a Reform MP for Clacton but said “do I want to spend every Friday for the next five years in Clacton?”.
He said he was “totally undecided” on his future adding that he was thinking about it all the time.
Farage told the Sunday Times: “I chuck it around my head every day. I go to bed thinking about it. What is the right thing to do or not to do?”
When asked by Sky News at the Popular Conservatism conference Farage said the party he wanted to be in was Reform adding: “I do think we face the possibility that this could be the end of the road for the Conservative Party.”
