The ghosts of Canada's 1993 Conservative wipeout hang over Britain's election campaign
CBC
Rural Alberta may be a continent away from the faded British seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea, but Nigel Farage believes both places will be remembered for starting political revolutions.
Already a familiar face to Britons, Farage has injected some drama into an otherwise staid British general election that the Labour Party under leader Keir Starmer appears well on its way to winning.
Farage, instead, has set his sights on the Conservatives, transforming his political party, Reform UK, into a rising political force that appears to be siphoning off their votes.
"What we want to do is replace [the Conservatives] with something more positive," Farage told CBC News at a well-attended political rally earlier this week in Clacton, where he's running to be the next member of Parliament.
Reform UK is just the latest in a series of political vehicles invented by Farage over the past three decades that have aimed to disrupt Britain's political status quo.
He was the former leader of the Euroskeptic United Kingdom Independence Party that pushed for Britain to leave the European Union. After Britain voted to leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum, he created the Brexit Party to push for a no-deal Brexit.
Though successful at securing seats in the 2019 European Parliament elections, the party didn't win any in the last U.K. general election that same year.
In 2021, after the final terms of departure from the EU were finalised, the Brexit Party was reborn as Reform UK. Farage has had seven failed attempts at securing a seat in Britain's Parliament, but his eighth attempt may be his best chance yet.
Since 2020, Reform UK has attracted a couple of high-profile defections from the governing Conservatives, but the July 4 vote will be its first major electoral test.
Likely best known for his anti-immigration policies, Farage has praised the political skills of Russian President Vladimir Putin, even though he said he "doesn't like him as a human being."
He also counts himself as a big admirer and friend of former U.S. president Donald Trump.
And, as he told CBC News in an interview in Clacton this week, he has great respect for former Canadian politician Preston Manning as well.
"Huge, huge, huge," he said, when asked about how important the former leader of Canada's Reform Party has been in shaping his current campaign.
Farage's often-stated ambition is for Reform UK to eventually replace the mighty British Conservative Party, which has run the country for the last 14 years. He said his blueprint for doing so is modelled after what Manning did in Canada.
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