Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has slammed the British political establishment for three years of “betrayal” as the country marks the third anniversary of the Brexit vote — still inside the European Union.
Mr Farage said the British public had “suffered three major betrayals” at the hands of “the political establishment” in an article for the Sunday Express — and warned that “the worst may be to come”.
“We could be facing the biggest betrayal of all if [Members of Parliament] prevent the UK from leaving on the new deadline of October 31,” wrote the veteran campaigner, observing that there are “there are already signs of another betrayal” at the hands of Tory leadership hopeful Boris Johnson.
While Mr Johnson fronted the Vote Leave campaign in 2016 and was an outspoken critic of Prime Minister Theresa May’s so-called Chequers plan for Brexit, and the thrice-rejected withdrawal treaty which is produced, Farage recalled that, “Like other Leaver candidates [in the Tory leadership contest], he set aside all his condemnations of Mrs May’s appalling deal and voted for it at the third time of asking.”
“Now there is talk of Prime Minister Johnson trying to pass a warmed-over version of that defeatist treaty through Parliament,” he added, pointing to the seeming endorsement of Johnson by anti-Brexit former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne — “the architect of Project Fear” — as a particularly troubling development.
Mr Johnson will be inheriting an incredibly precarious premiership if he succeeds in beating his Remain-voting successor as Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, in the Tory leadership contest, with the incumbent Prime Minister having to rely on Northern Ireland’s Brexit-supporting Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) for a slim and far from consistent parliamentary majority, with the Government losing many important votes on Brexit.
Most Tory MPs and an overwhelming majority of left-liberal opposition MPs voted against Brexit, and — despite both the Tories and Labour standing on election manifestos promising to respect the Leave vote — much of the opposition and a fair number of Tory Hard Remainers have backed anti-Brexit schemes in Parliament since the 2017 snap election.
Indeed, it is expected that opposition MPs will attempt to bring down the government within a day of either Mr Johnson or Mr Hunt claiming the Tory leadership, with Tory arch-Remainer Dominic Grieve indicating that he and his allies may well choose to topple the Government rather than allow either of them to pursue a clean, No Deal exit from the EU.
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