THE CONSERVATIVES cannot beat the Brexit Party by simply “out-Faraging” their newest opponents, a Swindon-born Tory leader hopeful has said.

Speaking to the Adver in the Swindon yesterday, Forest of Dean MP Mark Harper said the Conservative Party needed to develop a “credible plan” to deliver Brexit. He is one of 10 candidates in the race to be Tory leader, with Ladbrokes rating his chances at 100/1.

On Thursday, the party was pushed into third place in the Peterborough bye-election, with Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party narrowly losing to Labour.

Mr Harper, 49, who grew up in Headlands Grove and attended Headlands School and Swindon College, said: “A lot of my colleagues think the way to defeat Nigel Farage in the Brexit Party and win back the Conservative voters is to elect someone like Boris Johnson.

“I happen to think the way you deal with Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party is you don’t try and out-Farage them. You have to deliver the promises you made. My view is you need a credible Brexit plan.

“If we get that done and leave the European Union, I think that is how we will defeat the Brexit Party.

“It only has one reason for being and that is to make sure we keep the promises we made. Once we keep that promise I think they will disappear.”

Were he prime minister, Mr Harper said one of his first acts would be to get MPs from different sides around the table to agree a negotiating position to take to the European Union.

He said he would be prepared to leave the EU without a deal, but added: “My preference is to leave with a deal. I think that’s better for business, I think that’s better for the country and I think it’s also better for keeping the United Kingdom together.”

The UK needed to leave the EU by the time the country went to the polls next May: “Voters expect us to have delivered us on what we promised. The reason why we got such a kicking in the local elections, European elections and the bye-election in Peterborough, which was a seat we should have been able to win if we’d left the European Union, is because we hadn’t kept our promise.”

David Cameron’s last Chief Whip said he had Cabinet-level experience but had not been “sat round the table as part of the team that’s failed to get the job done” to leave the EU.

Yesterday, Mr Harper visited Swindon as he stepped up his bid to be party leader. Speaking in Goldsworthy’s, the Swindon hair salon he used to visit for a regular trim, he promised to step up funding for apprenticeships and further education colleges if he became prime minister.

The son of a labourer and a correspondence clerk, he left Swindon in 1988 to read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, the first in his family to go to university: “I was lucky, I had a supportive family, good education, but you have to earn stuff. The lesson I learned is you have to work incredibly hard. If you come from a background like mine you don’t often get second chances so you have to make the most of the opportunities you get. So, when I got the opportunity to go to Oxford I took full advantage of it.”