Nigel Farage has called on pro-Brexit voters to not just cast their ballots in protest at the forthcoming European Union elections, but to be part of a peaceful revolution in British politics that would see Parliament better represent the actual views and interests in voters.
With the country now just two weeks away from the national vote to select European Parliament candidates in an election that wasn’t even supposed to happen — but has now been accepted as inevitable by the British government — the new Brexit party is in full campaign mode and already topping the polls.
Interviewed on British television politics show Peston, Mr Farage was challenged that his new party was nothing more than mere “gesture politics”. Arguing that he was campaigning for something much deeper than that, he replied Wednesday night: “…This is not gesture politics, please believe me this is far from that. I am not looking for people to go out on May 23 and stick two fingers up at the establishment, tempting though as that is.
“This is the first step in a much bigger, much more ambitious project. We’re never going to get the Brexit we voted for with this current Parliament so we need to change the kind people that are sitting in the House of Commons. We will go on from the European elections and we will fight by-elections and general elections.”
Farage said the Conservatives were not offering the British people an actual Brexit, and that Theresa May’s deal was akin to a military surrender document.
While the Brexit party would damage the Conservatives — interviewer Peston even suggested the party was specifically designed to “blow up the Tory party” — Farage insisted the Brexit party would also strike at the many pro-Brexit Labour heartlands, where voters felt betrayed. Mr Farage said the question of whether the UK should be an independent, self-governing nation crossed “all political divides”.
The Conservatives are appearing increasingly threatened by the progress the Brexit party is making, and their soaring polling figures. Establishment newspaper The Times reported Thursday morning that leaked notes from Conservative European election campaign planning revealed the plan to deal with the Brexit party threat is to make personal attacks on Mr Farage himself, characterising him as an opportunist.
These comments followed others by Mr Farage last week, when the Brexit leader addressed a campaign rally and said that democracy itself is at stake in the United Kingdom. He told supporters: “Can you imagine an African country, if there had been an election or a referendum that had been overturned?
“Many of those in the Remain camp would be having fits of the vapours, demanding the United Nations was sent in and that democracy must win through… it is in our very country that the very democratic process has been wilfully betrayed by a political class that has acted — in my view — in the most disgraceful, almost treacherous manner.”
Remarking that the present two-party system was “no longer fit for service”, Mr Farage said the country needed a “peaceful political revolution” to win back the birthright of a functioning democracy.
Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook
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