Addressing media and Brexit Party activists in Hartlepool, north-east England, Farage explained that he had been heartened by the words of Boris Johnson on Sunday night.

In a video posted on social media, the UK PM insisted that he would not extend the Brexit transition and negotiate a super Canada-plus trade deal with no EU alignment. Farage claimed this was good enough for him to change his strategy and form an ‘unofficial’ Brexit ‘Leave alliance’ with the Conservative party.

The Brexit Party will not contest the 317 seats the Conservatives won at the last election.

In October, Farage branded Johnson’s agreement with Brussels as the “worst ‘deal’ in history” and last week he promised to field 600 candidates, insisting that it was “not Brexit.”

The major U-turn now means that the Brexit Party will focus its efforts on battling Jeremy  Corbyn’s Labour, who Farage says have “completely broken their manifesto in 2017” to respect the 2016 EU referendum.

The change of heart from Farage who had made a number of bold claims about how successful his party could be at the polls on December 12 has sparked much ridicule on social media. Many on Twitter have accused him of “bottling it,” including Labour’s

Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner who insisted that Farage had “bottled it and now morphed into the hard right Tory Party.”