![Nigel Farage says he wants to "take on consensus thinking and vested interests on COVID". Nigel Farage says he wants to "take on consensus thinking and vested interests on COVID".](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/2b28e89f-c9f2-40ba-9460-a8943cc9ebbe.jpg/r0_0_800_600_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage will relaunch the group as an anti-lockdown party called Reform UK in an attempt to fight anti-coronavirus measures imposed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government.
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In an opinion piece in The Telegraph on Sunday, Farage and party chairman Richard Tice wrote the new party would back a policy of focused protection from the coronavirus for only the most vulnerable and allow the rest of the population to develop herd immunity.
The name change had been submitted to the Electoral Commission, they said.
"We are showing the courage needed to take on consensus thinking and vested interests on COVID. But there are so many areas of public life that can be improved to benefit ordinary people. That is why we will campaign for Reform," Farage and Tice wrote.
The Brexit Party was set up in early 2019 by Farage, whose years of campaigning against membership of the European Union played a major part in delivering the 2016 referendum in which the UK voted to leave the bloc.
The prime minister on Saturday ordered England back into a lockdown after a second wave of infections threatened to overwhelm the health service.
Australian Associated Press