After winning the European Parliament elections, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has unveiled its candidates for the next Westminster election at its “Big Vision” rally.
Annunziata Rees-Mogg, party MEP and sister to Tory Brexit supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg, served as hypewoman as the candidates were introduced to attendees, joking “I’m now old news” and that the slate of Westminster parliamentary candidates were the future.
“Amongst these candidates there are economists, civil engineers, [a] forklift truck driver, teachers, academics… You name it, they are part of our country, they are part of our party,” she said.
“This is where real people start to shape our country’s great future”
Ms Rees-Mogg was followed by party chairman and entrepreneur Richard Tice, also elected to the European Parliament in June, who joked that the Big Vision rally’s venue had been used by Tory Party leadership finalists Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt — “the blonde and the bland” — and mustered far fewer attendees than his own surging party.
Mr Tice announced some of the Brexit Party’s signature policies: direct democracy, and hundreds of billions of investment in the north of the country, which has increasingly fallen behind London and its environs in the south-east, where the political class base themselves.
“We’ve got much bigger, bolder ambitions [than winning the EU elections],” he explained. “We want to be the biggest party in Westminster.”
He then unveiled a video explaining why he believes a strong plan for Britain’s left-behind regions is key to that ambition, saying it was not fair that London had got so much investment in infrastructure while they had been left to languish.
The Brexit Party, he said, would save “a hundred billion quid” moving “wealthy people to London faster” with the contentious High Speed Rail 2 (HS2) project, cancel Theresa May’s plan to send “almost £40 billion to Brussels” as the price of a Brexit “deal”, and slash the bloated foreign aid budget.
He also repudiated the claims of “Remoaners” that Brexiteers do not care about young people, pledging to stop charging interest on student loans and to cancel the accumulated interest on existing student loans.
Mr Tice was followed by Tim Martin, arguably the country’s best-known and most successful pub landlord, who emphasised how democracy has enriched countries like the United States and South Korea, while their less democratic neighbours to their south and north, respectively, have struggled.
Mr Martin was clear where he felt the European Union fell on the democratic spectrum, describing its “five unelected presidents” and railing against a European Parliament where members cannot initiate legislation and a European court unaccountable to any elected national parliament.
He also took aim at Project Fear, recalling that the massive job losses promised in the event of a vote to Leave had not materialised, and that similar threats about the impact of not joining the troubled Eurozone single currency area had proved unfounded.
Mr Tice returned to the mic to describe the party’s reform agenda, suggesting the first-past-the-post voting system, the Civil Service, the House of Lords, postal voting, and the BBC licence fee would all be overhauled.
Without further ado, the Brexit Party chairman then introduced the Brexit Party leader, Nigel Farage, with a short video — followed by his arrival on stage to a rapturous reception.
Mr Farage began by reflecting that the Brexit Party had been launched just 49 days ago, and had already made stunning progress.
“It’s been unbelievably, as Richard said, we didn’t just top the polls [in the EU elections]… we’ve managed to polls for how [people] intend to vote in the next general election,” he said.
“We have given people hope: that’s our major achievement,” he added, lambasting the two-party system which has “only served itself”.
“Brexit is the greatest opportunity that any of us will see in our lifetimes,” he added.
“If you vote Tory, you will get [Labour leader Jeremy] Corbyn, and you should stand aside for the Labour Party who can beat them,” Farage said, alluding to the fact that it is the Brexit Party, and not the Tories, who are now the major challengers to Labour in many constituencies.
He also threw down the gauntlet to Tory leadership favourite Boris Johnson, warning him, “I will not be put back in my box by you or anyone else!” — prompting cheers of “Nigel! Nigel!”
The veteran campaigners also announced the publication of a new free newspaper named The Brexiteer, and a planed national action day which would see 500 stalls erected across the country.
“Without us, there will be no proper Brexit — because we have a Remain Parliament; because we have a Remain broadcast media — Andrew Marr, anybody? — but in politics itself, who should we trust?” he asked.
“Should we trust Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt, perhaps?” he continued — prompting shouts of “NO” from the audience.
Farage recalled that current Tory leader Theresa May’s promises — 108 of them — to deliver Brexit on March 29th had been broken; that Jeremy Hunt was a Remainer; and that Boris wrote about Mrs May’s proposed EU treaty that it would reduce Britain to vassalage, but voted for it on the third time of asking anyway.
“What is he on? Is he spending too much time with Michael Gove?” he quipped, referring to the Environment Secretary’s recent admission of cocaine use.
“Rule number one of British politics is ‘Never trust the Tories’,” he added.
He suggested that the “North London aristocracy” running the Labour Party were little better, however, citing Sir Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry, and Diane Abbott — who received successively louder boos from the crowd.
Like Richard Tice, he emphasised the Brexit Party’s desire to “invest in the rest” outside to London, and that its “Brexit Booster Plan” would revitalise the wider country.
He pledged big investment in high-speed Internet and telecommunications infrastructure, lamenting that countries like Namibia, where he spent the New Year, were often better served than parts of England.
“Why don’t we, outside of the European Union, give [public] contracts to British companies?” he added.
“And why don’t we link that thought with our own younger generation? Yeah, I know more of them voted Remain than voted Brexit, but given the prevailing bias in schools and universities, perhaps that’s not surprising,” he said.
“Our young people have been horribly misled,” he continued, saying they should not be turned off from “learning trades and skills” in favour of being packed off to university en masse, acquiring unhelpful degrees and substantial debts.
He suggested that major infrastructure investments would be an opportunity to create many genuine apprenticeships, and that for those young people who do go to university, interest payments which in days gone by “would have been called usury” would be scrapped.
“Thank you, everybody,” Farage concluded, pledging that the Brexit Part would be a “radical force” for change in British politics.
Mr Tice echoed these sentiments, saying the party would “put the fear of God” in the Westminster establishment — before wrapping up the rally with the traditional chants of “What do we want? Brexit! When do we want it? Now!”