Nigel Farage has led the Brexit Party to victory while the establishment parties are left assessing the damage after their historic losses, with the Brexiteer declaring: “This is just the beginning.”
With almost all regions counted, the Brexit Party is in the clear lead after winning around one-third of the vote and projected to have gained 29 seats. In a distant second, the pro-Remain Liberal Democrats won 15 seats, while the new Change UK (CUK), established solely to stop Brexit, failed to gain a single seat.
“Never before in British politics has a party just 6 weeks old won a national election,” Mr Farage posted to Twitter Monday morning. “If Britain does not leave the EU on October 31st, these results will be repeated at a general election.
“History has been made. This is just the beginning.”
Media reports that the Tories suffered their worst election result in two centuries, dropping to just nine per cent of the vote and winning only four seats — losing 15 — while the Labour Party is said to have had its worst election result in 100 years, halving its presence in the European Parliament from 20 to just ten seats.
Speaking to Good Morning Britain on Monday morning, Mr Farage warned that the establishment political parties will suffer in the next General Election, scheduled for 2021, if they fail to take the UK out of the EU by October 31st, saying: “That date will become a bigger factor in peoples’ minds as these five months go by. If we don’t leave on the 31st of October, then the Brexit Party will go on to a General Election and stun everybody there, too.”
The Brexit Party leader later told the BBC that his party would be ready for even an October snap General Election, saying that it “might not be easy, but that work starts this afternoon.”
Recent polling of Westminster voting intentions point to the Brexit Party being ahead of the Conservative Party and just two points away from taking the lead over Labour.
Next month, the Brexit Party is challenging the establishment parties in the Peterborough by-election after the former Labour MP Fiona Onasanya was unseated following a recall petition.
After winning, according to provisional results, 29 seats in the European Parliament, the Brexit Party could find itself gain its first seat in the British House of Parliament, the next step in Mr Farage’s challenge to the two-party system, bringing about a “peaceful revolution” in British politics.