Nigel Farage slams ‘ludicrous’ Reform cold-calling election claim

The party leader said the only people receiving such calls were “paid-up members of the party”, and that any claim otherwise was “absolute rot”.

It comes after The Guardian reported that Reform had been ringing members of the public who had signed up for the party’s email updates to ask them to stand as “paper candidates”.

Those who had reportedly been asked to stand included members of other parties and a Guardian journalist.

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Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage. (Image: Yui Mok / PA)

Mr Farage told the Press Association: “Could you think of anything more ludicrous than going through the phone book and saying, ‘Please would you be a candidate?’ It’s absolute rot.”

He said: “If one of their (The Guardian) reporters is a paid-up member of the party, masquerading as a supporter, when in fact they’re not, that’s why they would have got a phone call.”

Thursday afternoon marks the deadline to submit nominations to stand in the local elections.

Paper candidates are those who stand for election, but are unlikely to win and may not do any active campaigning.

Asked whether paper candidates were fair to voters, Mr Farage told PA: “Do you think the Conservative Party standing in Sunderland expect their candidates to win? Of course, they don’t.

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Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Siobhan Whyte. (Image: Jacob King / PA)

“Or Labour candidates standing in rural Oxfordshire? Of course not.

“All parties have candidates that are target seats and candidates that are not target seats.

“The real challenge is finding 5,000 candidates, and nominations will close tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll see where all the parties are.

“I would suggest that, actually, you’ll see a lot of the big parties struggling to field full lists.”

Responding to YouGov polling from April 6-7 that found 4% of Britons would vote for Restore Britain in a general election, Mr Farage said that YouGov was “utterly discredited”.

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Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage. (Image: Adam Davy / PA)

“YouGov was the gold standard of polling; it has now completely lost its way,” he said.

On Restore Britain, he said the party was “not standing in these elections”, arguing that they were fielding only a handful of candidates.

He added: “Politics isn’t just about ideas – and by the way, their party’s ideas, officially, are exactly the same as ours – politics is about money, structure, organisation, discipline and all of those things.

“It is much harder to form a brand new political party and have success.

“And you know what, I’m going to say to you, I can’t do it modestly, but I’m pretty much the only person in modern times that has set up new political parties from scratch that have achieved success. It is a very, very difficult thing to do.”