Nigel Farage’s Brexit party names business leaders in European election candidate line-up
Nigel Farage today promised to go after the Labour Party’s vote as he unveiled business and charity leaders among its European election candidates.
Lance Forman, the owner of H Foreman and Son, an artisan salmon smokehouse in London's Hackney Wick, will run for the Brexit Party just weeks after it was formed.
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He will be joined on the candidate list by Matthew Patten, who was formerly the chief executive of the Mayor's Fund For London and has worked as a consultant for Children in Need, according to his Linkedin page.
Other candidates include former nurse and community leader Christina Jordan, military veteran and broadcaster James Glancy and free speech campaigner Claire Fox.
The Brexit party tweeted: “We need people with real life experience taking leadership, not this current useless political class.”
Farage said his party has already taken many votes from Ukip, which he used to head, after it took a series of wrong turns.
“I think we’ll go on squeezing the Conservative vote, I think we’ll go on squeezing the Ukip vote down to virtually nothing. But I think the big target for this party is to say Brexit is not about left and right – it’s about right or wrong. It’s about us being a fully functioning democratic nation, a normal country, and we're going to go after that Labour vote in a very big way.”
Farage promised to spend most of his time on the election campaign trail in Brexit-supporting Labour heartlands, including South Wales the Midlands and the North of England.
He revealed the party has already attracted 65,000 paying members who have contributed their £25 joining fee.
He chose St George’s Day to unveil the list of candidates, promising the Brexit Party will “be proud to be English and British at the same time.”
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Change UK also revealed that Rachel Johnson, sister of Brexiter Boris Johnson, will stand as a candidate in its line-up today ahead of the 23 May elections.
She told the Standard: “A vote to leave the EU is so important, so life-changing for the next two generations that I am impelled to stand up and be counted for what I believe in, which is that we are far better in Europe.”