Nigel Farage has said the Brexit Party will not contest the 317 seats won by the Conservatives at the last UK general election.
The announcement means he has abandoned plans to contest more than 600 candidates in the upcoming ballot.
Speaking to supporters in Hartlepool he said the party would not stand in the 317 seats won by the Conservatives in the last election in 2017.
He said he had taken the decision because he feared that if they had run it would have led to a hung Parliament with significant gains for the Liberal Democrats.
The move is a significant boost for Boris Johnson amid warnings by Conservative ministers that they risked splitting the Brexit vote.
“We’ve decided ourselves that we absolutely have to put country before party and take the fight to Labour,” Mr Farage said.
Meanwhile, millionaire and former Farage ally Arron Banks is set to advise voters in hundreds of seats to vote for Boris Johnson over the Brexit Party.
Mr Banks is preparing to unveil a tactical voting app in a bid to give the Prime Minister a majority of pro-Brexit MPs in order to push his Withdrawal Agreement through.
“We have to get Boris a majority so we can get Brexit done.”
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Boris Johnson has pledged to change the law to protect Armed Forces veterans from vexatious legal action as he announced a raft of measures to support military personnel.
The Tories want to end unfair trials of veterans where no new evidence has been produced and the accusations have been questioned exhaustively in court.
