Nigel Farage is paying the price for comparing Nato to Soviet Union & saying we provoked Ukraine war, top Tory says

NIGEL Farage’s Ukraine gaffe shows he is “not fit to hold high office”, a top Tory blasted today.

Former Defence Secretary Liam Fox told our Never Mind The Ballots show that the Reform chief’s claim that the West provoked mad tyrant Vladimir Putin was “a dangerous worldview”.

The Tory candidate also said he would not welcome the Brexit frontman into the party, blasting: “I think he's not fit to hold high office in the United Kingdom.

“I think the views that he represents have been going down very badly with British people who have been shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine.

“All through this, incredibly generous to the people of Ukraine, and through their taxation, incredibly helpful to the Government of Ukraine in defending itself against Russian aggression.”

It comes as fresh polling showed Farage was now less popular than Rishi Sunak among 2019 Tory voters, with the Ukraine comments directly hurting his ratings.

The Reform chief saw his net approval rating among blue voters plunge by nine points from just a week ago.

The survey, by JL Partners and the Rest is Politics podcast, also found Reform had dropped five points with women from 15 per cent to just 10 per cent.

Dr Fox continued: “I’m not really feeling a huge amount about Reform and they’re certainly going backwards.

“I was in Northamptonshire yesterday, and where they had seemed to be doing well a week ago, they seem to be dropping back according to the people I was talking to on the doorstep. 

“I think a big part of that has been Nigel Farage saying yesterday that Boris Johnson was the worst Prime Minister of all time, of course, he was very pally with Boris Johnson at one point.

“And much more importantly, was what Nigel Farage had been saying about Ukraine.

“As a former Defence Secretary, I think it's completely irresponsible and completely unacceptable to try to make the case that there's a moral equivalence between Nato... and the Soviet Union, which is an internal brutal dictatorship, which abuses human rights.

“There is no moral equivalence here. 

“We did not provoke the war in Ukraine.”

But pressed on whether Boris Johnson was a hypocrite after he previously claimed Nato was part-responsible for the annexation of Crimea, Dr Fox hit back: “I thought that was tosh then and it’s tosh now.

“I think Boris Johnson was wrong on that. 

“It gives Putin an excuse to say, ‘Well, you see, I was provoked by NATO’.

"It's actually a dangerous worldview.

“People who've got free from the Soviet Union are perfectly entitled to whatever defence relationships they want.

“They are free and sovereign democratic states and have the same rights as we do.”