Nigel Farage vows to target Labour heartlands with new Brexit Party

The former Ukip leader was in Westminster to launch another slate of Brexit Party candidates, including Claire Fox, a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

Vowing to campaign in Labour heartlands of south Wales, the Midlands and the north of England, Mr Farage said he had set his sights on Labour voters.

Speaking at a campaign event to announce five new candidates, Mr Farage said the party was already “doing very well” with Conservative supporters.

He said: “There are five million people that voted for Jeremy Corbyn and voted for Brexit as well, and that’s going to be our task.

“I think we will go on squeezing the Conservatives and squeezing Ukip down to virtually nothing.

“We’re going to go after that Labour vote in a very big way.”

Attacking rival new pro-Remain party Change UK as “Continuity UK”, Mr Farage said his candidates were the ones who would “revolutionise and modernise politics”.

Ms Fox was introduced as a “free speech campaigner” and author, and said she would be “standing in solidarity” with the Leave voters whose voices “have been traduced and trashed”.

James Glancy, a Royal Marine veteran, said he was compelled to stand because he felt politicians were “undermining democracy” and “our leadership is humiliating the British public on the international stage”.

Former charity boss Matthew Patten said he believed the Brexit Party would help the country regain its “confidence in the future”.

Former nurse Christina Jordan claimed Remain-supporting MPs had been blocking Brexit and “hysterical MPs call Brexiteers Nazi appeasers”, adding “they are driving us at a cost of £100 million into European elections and want us to pat them on the back”.

Smoked salmon producer Lance Foreman was the final candidate, who said his past experience as a special adviser for former trade secretary Peter Lilley had shown him only “political obsessives” could be successful in Westminster.

He added: “To be honest, I found the transition from politics to oily fish was quite straightforward.”

However, Mr Farage was less enthusiastic when asked what he could personally offer working-class voters, with his private school education and background in stockbroking.

“I was never in banking, next question,” he said.

When pressed, he said: “I did have a private school education – you can’t choose your parents, you can’t choose your name.

“Mine called me Nigel and we’ve got a female candidate with an even more difficult name.

“The things that unite people across the spectrums, across the classes, across the racial divide, and indeed across the religious divide as well, and it is a belief that nation state democracy is the right way to live your life.”