A Brexit Party MEP has reacted with anger to the suggestion that now Boris Johnson is Prime Minister the party should stand aside, insisting that the British people still need to hold politicians to account over the promised withdrawal from the European Union which still hasn’t happened.
Claire Fox, a new member of the European Parliament and, as a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party a key example of the broad political coalition for Brexit Nigel Farage has built, reacted to the suggestion that the Brexit Party could now be merely dismissed by the government as the party announced 50 new candidates ready for a snap election.
Talks of a potential electoral pact between the Brexit Party and the Conservatives have intensified in recent weeks, and as the candidate lists published by the Brexit Party themselves showed they would be standing against even Conservative Brexiteers. Reacting to the dismissive attitude towards the Brexit Party exhibited by some in the Conservative Party that now nominal Brexiteer Boris Johnson was leading the country they could wind up operations, MEP Fox said: “I think there’s something really quite offensive about having a party that says ‘OK Brexit Party, you can stand down now, we’ve now got a Conservative Party that’s talking the good talk on Brexit’.”
UKIP, the party formerly led by Nigel Farage and the official leave campaigns in 2016 that all played significant roles in delivering a successful vote to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union in 2016 to some extent made the same mistake that the Brexit Party is being called upon to do now, by letting their collective guards down when Prime Minister Theresa May promised to deliver Brexit. The Brexit Party was founded nearly three years later in response to the fact those promises had been broken.
Pointing out the Brexit Party’s already key role in holding the establishment’s feet to the fire over respecting democracy, and perhaps going some way to explain why that same establishment would be glad to see them stand aside, Fox continued: “If the Brexit Party didn’t exist, Theresa May would still be running the Conservative Party… Brexit was more or less thwarted, and over. The role of the Brexit Party continues to be to argue for a clean Brexit, to continue arguing for democracy. You have to remember that Brexit was almost thwarted, Brexit voters were being traduced.
“…the idea that anyone treats the Brexit Party as a kind of junior wing of the Conservative Party that can be dismissed because we’ve done our job doesn’t understand there is something much more profound happening in British politics today.”
The growing list of Parliamentary seats ready to be challenged by the Brexit Party will inevitably keep the pressure on Boris Johnson’s Conservative government to keep its word and deliver Brexit, as many of the candidates to stand could deprive sitting Conservatives of their seats. Brexit Party Chairman Richard Tice said today: “Today we release the names of 50 more high-calibre Prospective Parliamentary Candidates who stand ready to shake up Westminster, deliver a proper Brexit and help Change Politics for Good.
“The high quality, diversity, integrity, and resolve of the people putting themselves forward are exceptional. The Brexit Party will keep the pressure on the political establishment until it listens to and respects the will of British people.”
The new Parliamentary candidates include a former organiser for the Anti Nazi League Alaric Bamping, comedian and author Dominic Frisby, and the author grandson of Evelyn Wauge, Alexander Waugh.
It isn’t just the Conservatives that watch the Brexit Party with concern. Polling and the European Union parliament vote show the Party is picking up large numbers of voters in Labour’s northern former heartlands, areas in which many from working-class communities favour Brexit and feel alienated by Labour’s metropolitan, north-London centric leadership. The Brexit Party fired a warning shot across the bow of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn Monday morning by also announcing a candidate in his Islington North constituency.
The irony won’t be lost on Mr Corbyn himself, who has been a long-standing critic of the European Union but was apparently forced to drop his views after becoming the leader of the Labour Party. James Heartfield will stand for the Brexit Party in Corbyn’s constituency and said of being selected: “I’ve lived in Islington since the 1980s, working in the Council and now as a history teacher… Seeing the way the EU forced vicious austerity policies on Greece and Portugal convinced me we had to get out.
“Free from the EU Britain can make its own decisions about what kind of country it wants to be. I’ve been a Brexit Party supporter since it launched and urge anyone who believes in freedom and in democracy to join us.”
Following the first 50 announced last week, the Brexit party announced another 50 today. Had your area been revealed yet?
Aberdeen North – Diane Elliott
Aylesbury – Allison Wild
Bath – Adefolajimi Adekanmi Ogunnusi
Beckenham – Dr Chidi Ngwaba
Birmingham, Erdington – Wendy Garcarz
Bolsover – Kevin Brendan Harper
Bridgwater and West Somerset – Alexander Evelyn Michael Waugh
Broadland – Alex Hayes
Bromsgrove – Mandy Childs
Broxbourne – Maximilian James Jackson
Bury North – Alan McCarthy
Charnwood – Sadhana Stokes
Dartford – Alaric Bamping
Doncaster North – Andrew Stewart
Ealing Central and Acton – Samir Alsoodani
East Devon – Michael John Amor
Eddisbury – Nicholas William Sean Goulding
Folkestone and Hythe – Matthew Patten
Grantham and Stamford – Jessica Swift
Hastings and Rye – Tom Bewick
Havant – Christopher Ellis
Hertsmere – Graham Barry Shore
Huntingdon – David Blake
Isle of Wight – Peter Wiltshire
Islington North – James Heartfield
Leeds East – Sarah Wass
Mid Sussex – David Banks
Newcastle-under-Lyme – Jason Crawford Cooper
North Durham – Peter Telford
Norwich South – Graham Roberts-Phelps
Old Bexley and Sidcup – Dominic Frisby
Portsmouth North – Angela Hancock
Portsmouth South – Susan Lloyd
Runnymede and Weybridge – Lorna Rowland
Skipton and Ripon – Charlotte Kozlow
Slough – Vishal Khatri
Stafford – Anne Elizabeth Grahamslaw
Staffordshire Moorlands – Richard Watkin
Stourbridge – Aaron Hudson
The Cotswolds – Peter Udale
Truro and Falmouth – Paul Christopher Wood
Tunbridge Wells – Christopher Pendleton
Wantage – Sally Ann Rainbow-Ockwell
Warrington South – Dennis Rogers
Washington and Sunderland West – Howard Brown
Watford – William Berry
Welwyn Hatfield – Keith Adams
West Dorset – Rosie Darkin-Miller
Workington – Philip Walling
Ynys Môn – Helen Jenner
Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook
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