Farage's plot to take down Labour 'donkeys' and Corbyn after he commits 'historic mistake'

The Brexit Party leader told how Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to support a second referendum handed him a “golden opportunity”. Mr Farage spoke out after an exclusive poll for the Sunday Express revealed that Mr Corbyn’s surrender to the Remainers made almost two in five voters less likely to back him. The results have also emboldened Tory leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson, who was the most popular choice as Prime Minister. But with Mr Farage’s Brexit Party still riding high in the polls, he acknowledged it was crucial that Brexit was delivered succesfully.

Mr Johnson said: “Sunday Express readers know how important it is that we deliver Brexit on October 31st. Another failure would end trust in the Conservative Party and in British Politics.

“Only by delivering Brexit can we then unite the Party and the country and turn our guns on Jeremy Corbyn, beat him and his mad Marxist mob and consign them to the dustbin of history.”

Meanwhile, with a Remain alliance of parties getting behind the Lib Dem candidate in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, Tory Brexiteer MPs supporting Mr Johnson are privately pressing him to have a pact with the Brexit Party.

With Labour racked in civil war over the anti-Semitism scandal the party still topped the poll with 28 percent to the Conservatives’ 24 percent and Brexit Party’s 20 percent.

However, the figures showed that the change of Brexit policy has left it open to being wiped out in previously safe areas of the country.

According to the poll 37 percent of the 2,025 respondents are less likely to vote Labour as a result of the policy switch while only 22 percent are more likely to back Labour.

The polling is the first time the claims by Remainers in Labour such as Lord Adonis that backing a second referendum is an election winner have been properly tested.

The results revealed that a fifth of declared Labour supporters would now consider abandoning the party for an alternative.

The figures are potentially devastating in traditional Labour heartlands which backed Leave in the referendum with 40 percent in the North West, 43 percent in Yorkshire and Humberside, 38 percent in the East Midlands, 36 percent in the West Midlands and 35 percent in the North East less likely to back Labour.

The only region where the new policy improves Labour’s chances is London where it won 48 out of the 73 seats at the last election anyway.

The poll also ran a comparison of Mr Corbyn with Mr Johnson, Mr Farage and foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt. Amongst leave supporting voters, just 11 percent think he would be the best Prime Minister.

The Brexit Party topped the poll in the recent European election in every region except London and Scotland and came close to defeating Labour in the Peterborough by-election.

Recently, it also announced a £200 billion investment policy for the regions outside London cancelling foreign aid, High Speed 2 and not paying the £39 billion demanded in the divorce bill by Brussels in what was a pitch to the Brexit voting areas.

Writing in today’s Sunday Express, Mr Farage said that Labour is no longer the “party of the people.”

He went on: “Now the Brexit Party is the true party of the people. We are the only party committed to giving 17.4 million Leave voters what they voted for more than three years ago – a clean-break Brexit.”

He noted that there was a time that Labour could have fielded a donkey in parts of the UK and still expect to win.

But he added: “Labour has turned its back on millions of working-class Leave voters for good. Those Labour MP “donkeys” are about to become an endangered species.”

However, he also noted the problem of the Remain alliance in the by-election in Wales where the Lib Dems are now expected to win.

The problems have led a group of Tory MPs supporting Mr Johnson to push behind the scenes for an electoral pact with the Brexit Party.

One of the senior Tory MPs Andrew Bridgen noted that the ComRes poll confirms that the Brexit vote is being split between the Conservatives and Brexit Party and at a combined 44 percent would easily defeat Labour.

With Tory Remainer MPs such as Dominic Grieve and Ken Clarke threatening to back a vote of no confidence in Mr Johnson if he pushes for no deal and forcing an election, Tory MPs believe that a deal needs to be done to ensure the Brexit supporters make the majority in Parliament.

Mr Bridgen said: “A lot of us are expecting an election by May at the latest and maybe much earlier, it seems obvious that we have to have some sort of deal with the Brexit Party.

“Boris won’t talk about that now but he knows what needs to be done.”

The strong backing for no deal within the Conservative Party was highlighted by a YouGov poll for the Remain group Bst for Britain.

It found Conservative voters now favour a no-deal exit by 68-20.

But, overall, 40 percent of all respondents of the survey of 1,703 people wanted to leave without a deal although 45 percent opposed it.

Meanwhile, a British attitudes survey by the polling company ORB for the Countryside Alliance has found that 56 percent of Tory supporters are based in the countryside identifying as rural or semi-rural.

It also showed that among all voters only 27 percent consider the impact of Brexit to be an important rural issue while top was access to hospitals and healthcare with 49 percent, transport links 37 percent and affordable housing 35 percent.

With the Tory leadership debate still hit by Mr Hunt’s support for a free vote on fox hunt less than one in six thought animal was an important issue while a mere six per cent saw fox hunting as an important environmental issue compared to 58 percent climate change and 55 percent plastic pollution.

Tim Bonner, the Countryside Alliance chief executive, said: “This research shows that if you unpack voters’ concerns about environmental issues they are worried about climate change, plastics and pollution, not animal right issues like badger culling and fox hunting.

It clearly lays out to the candidates for the Conservative Party leadership, and to other political parties, the environmental issues which people actually care about.

“The fact that 4 times more people are concerned about the decline in the bee population than are worried about fox hunting shows that there is no electoral downside in retaining robust evidence-based policies on wildlife management.”