Richard Tice has laid bare his desire to eliminate the Tories at the next election as he vowed to “reshape politics” in the UK. His party, Reform UK, once known as the Brexit Party, is now polling at seven percent, making them about as popular as the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.
Although Mr Tice’s party currently has no MPs, at a New Year press conference in London, he laid out his “bold, brave solutions” as he claimed his mission was to make sure the Conservative Party “never have a majority Government again”.
Mr Tice said Britain had been “broken” by 12 years of Tory rule, hours before Rishi Sunak gave a speech setting out his priorities for 2023, which included reducing NHS waiting times and inflation.
In 2019, the Brexit Party, at the time led by Nigel Farage, agreed not to put up candidates for election in 317 seats against the Tories.
This was due to Boris Johnson’s promise to deliver Brexit by the end of 2020.
Mr Tice has slammed this decision as leaving “scars on my back” as he said the Tories and Labour had run out of ideas to tackle the crises the UK is facing.
He told reporters: “I think the Tory Party… deserve to be smashed and destroyed given what they’ve done to the country.”
While he said that former leader Nigel Farage was on “great form” and claimed they were in regular contact, he declined to comment on whether he would make a return to politics.
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When asked if this meant his populist party’s future depended on a Labour Government being elected, Mr Tice said: “The more people that vote for Reform, the more the pressure will be on getting proportional representation.”
Sir Keir Starmer has yet to adopt proportional representation as an official policy.
The Labour leader is expected to make a speech outlining Labour’s vision for the year on Thursday.
