Nigel Farage has admitted he regrets stitching up an election deal to help Boris Johnson win a landslide victory in 2019.
The former Brexit Party leader pulled candidates from the 317 seats the Conservatives won at the 2017 election to give the Tories a clear run to power.
The humiliating move came after Mr Johnson ignored his appeal for a 'Leave Alliance' pact of pro-Brexit parties.
The-then PM, who replaced Theresa May in No10 in July 2019, went on to win an 80-seat Commons majority using the campaign slogan “Get Brexit Done”. The UK formally left the EU on January 31, 2020.
Mr Farage, who sensationally admitted last week that Brexit had been a "failure", now regrets doing a deal with Mr Johnson in 2019.
He told ITV's Peston: "I felt at that moment in time, we just had to get it over the line. I have some regrets now, yes, of course I do.”
He said: “The Conservatives effectively lied to the country in 2019, they've not delivered Brexit and Sunak now is saying he doesn't want us to compete with our neighbours, which is almost an admission we're going to stick close to single market rules.
"This is not what millions voted for."
The former UKIP leader also hinted that he might return to frontline politics.
Asked if he would be doing that or moving abroad, he said: "Oh the former not the latter… I'm thinking very hard about it.
"I tell you what, just over ten years ago I saw the gap between Westminster, politics and media and the country, and I led an insurgency with UKIP. The gap is now bigger than it was then."
It comes after Mr Farage, who is seen as an architect of Brexit, said the project had "failed".
He told BBC2’s Newsnight: “What I do think is that we haven’t actually benefited from Brexit, economically, what we could have done.
“What Brexit has proved, I’m afraid, is that our politicians are about as useless as the commissioners in Brussels were.
“We have mismanaged this totally and if you look at simple things such as takeovers, such as corporation tax, we are driving business away from our country.
“Arguably, now we’re back in control we are regulating our own businesses even more than they were as EU members.
"Brexit has failed.”
But asked if the UK would have been better off economically in the EU, he said: “I don’t think that for a moment.”
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