Brexit is the beginning of the end for the European Union, Nigel Farage said in Strasbourg Wednesday, as he praised the Polish people for their rising Euroscepticism — which comes as Poland’s own Supreme Court mulls the country’s future in the bloc over the primacy of EU law.
Nigel Farage — leader of the Brexit Party and a key, if not the pivotal figure in steering Britain out of the European Union over mocked European Union leaders Wednesday believing that it was business as usual in Strasbourg, and carrying on as usual. Taking his turn in the chamber, the top Eurosceptic said: “You can delude yourselves this morning inside this cathedral this morning, but it isn’t. People don’t want to be run and governed by faceless bureaucrats like Michel and Von Der Leyen. Did you hear them earlier? Dull as ditch water. You are being rejected!”
Having noted that the United Kingdom was shortly to leave the European Union — the first brick out of the European wall — Mr Farage turned his attention to others who could follow. He said: “And it’s great news that in Poland opinion polls now show a majority polls think they would be better off outside the European Union.
“Brexit is the beginning of the end of this project — we are giving leadership. And we will take it to a Europe of sovereign states working together, being friends together, but not being run by the gang [of Eurofederalists]”.
Days before making the remarks in the Strasbourg chamber — the second home of the European Union after Brussels — Mr Farage had shared a Polish news article about the number of countrymen in European nations feeling they would be better outside the European Union, noting “More Poles now want to leave the EU than wish to remain. And nearly half of the Slovenians and Italians surveyed are not happy with bloc membership.”
The figures alluded to, in fact, were the European Union’s own “Eurobarometer” research, a major annual assessment of sentiment, attitudes, and feeling across all EU member states. As Breitbart London reported when the research was published, European voters were on average much less likely to trust the European Union, and many would see their countries leave the bloc altogether.
Supporting a so-called ‘Polexit’, a plurality of Polish voters said in the survey they believed their country would be better able to “face the future outside the EU”, with 47 per cent in favour to 45 against. This figure, remarkably, made Poland even more Eurosceptic than the United Kingdom which is already in the process of leaving the EU, but even Poles aren’t the most sceptical — according to the EU survey, Slovakians had the highest proportion agreeing with the statement at 48 per cent.
Meanwhile, the European Union itself is expressing disquiet over having Poland as a member of the bloc at all. While Poland is a net beneficiary of Brussels’ largess, receiving large amounts in regional development funds and other handouts, it has long proven uncomfortable with the general direction of travel of the bloc, particularly as the EU has continued seizures of national government powers and attempted to force migrant redistribution.
Brussels has repeatedly talked up punishing European nations that don’t play by their rules — what they call governing by “European values” — Poland and Hungary being foremost among them when that criticism comes. In a clear development of these issues, Poland’s own supreme court is now discussing whether the government’s insistence that it be able to run the nation without foreign interference is even compatible with EU membership.
The United Kingdom has now voted to leave the European Union, or backed political parties promising Brexit several times. In the three national elections since the British people gave Brexit the largest political mandate in the nation’s history in 2016, the Conservatives ended the largest party in two, and the Brexit Party won one. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised to deliver a technical Brexit by the end of January 2020, and a full withdrawal from the Union by the end of that year.