Revealed: The extraordinary offer made by Tory fixers to 'bribe' Nigel Farage ... trends now
They were the secret negotiations between Nigel Farage's Brexit Party and shadowy Tory fixer Dougie Smith which sowed the seeds of the disaster facing Rishi Sunak.
It can now be revealed that Mr Smith, who has been accused of plotting with Michael Gove to topple Boris Johnson, led a team of Tory power brokers who tried to ‘bribe’ Mr Farage into withdrawing before the 2019 election by offering him a knighthood, ten peerages for his Brexit Party members and influence over the Government’s ‘policy direction’.
Mr Farage’s response was to text a ‘very rude’ message to Boris.
Later that day, Boris recorded a video clip making promises over the delivery of Brexit which satisfied Mr Farage sufficiently to withdraw his candidates from all Conservative seats, which had the effect of doubling Boris’s majority on polling day.
Dougie Smith and a team of Tory power brokers tried to 'bribe' Nigel Farage into withdrawing before the 2019 election by offering him a knighthood
Now Mr Sunak is reaping the whirlwind from that process: the leaders of Reform UK, the successor organisation to the Brexit Party, say that the fraught negotiations and the failure of the Conservatives to effectively implement Brexit, has ‘poisoned all trust’ between them and helps to drive a determination to wipe them out at this year’s general election.
‘Our experience in 2019 showed us that the Conservative Party cannot be trusted. They are totally devoid of principle and corrupt to the core,’ Mr Farage told The Mail on Sunday.
‘They combined the carrot of bribery with the stick of intimidation. They seem to think that is acceptable behaviour’.
As the deadline for registering candidates neared in November 2019, Mr Smith met Richard Tice, who now leads Reform, in a nondescript office building south of Westminster Bridge.
A knighthood was dangled for Farage - because he had already said he wouldn’t accept a place in the Lords - along with peerages for Mr Tice and selected Brexit MEPs if Mr Farage agreed to a public photo-op on the Tuesday declaring his support for Boris.
When Mr Farage’s intermediary, Brexit MEP Robert Rowland, relayed the news to him he demanded that the room be cleared.
‘I was told that no-one had ever heard me shout that loud,’ Mr Farage said. ‘I sent a very rude message to Boris. He did not respond’.
Mr Tice is also understood to have been separately offered the safe Tory seat of Rutland if he supported Boris.
Allies of Mr Johnson stress that the former prime minister ‘knew nothing’ about the meeting with Mr Smith, the offer of peerages or any other inducements.
One source said that the atmosphere in the meeting with Mr Smith was ‘full of suspicion and mistrust - which turned out to be well-founded’. But the source added: ‘Richard was very clear the issue was about policy not preferment. He wanted to see us out of the EU quickly and cleanly - he wasn’t interested in baubles.’
It is perhaps inevitable that Mr Smith led the attempted shuttle diplomacy.
In her book, The Plot: The Political
