Nigel Farage is leaving his five-shows-a-week slot on the UK’s LBC radio, the abrupt end to the slot coming days after he criticised the violence and iconoclasm of left-wing activists in Britain.
London-based radio station LBC announced the departure Thursday afternoon, in a short statement revealing that while the Brexit campaigner’s contract was soon to end, nevertheless it was being terminated immediately. The station said: “We thank Nigel for the enormous contribution he has made to LBC and wish him well.”
Mr Farage had presented da five-days-a-week show for LBC — with some breaks for political campaigning, for instance during the EU parliament elections which his party won in 2019 — for three years. He interviewed U.S. President Donald Trump on the show in October 2019, and used the show to warn the British people that the Brexit they voted for in 2016 was in the process of being betrayed.
Breitbart has approached Mr Farage for comment.
LBC is one of the few stations in the United Kingdom offering a predominantly talk-radio format. It has had a stable of presenters from across the political spectrum but, without a replacement announced, the mix is now significantly less diverse.
LBC host and outspoken remainer James O’Brien crowed about the change and shift leftwards of the network Thursday, taking to Twitter to declare “We got our station back.”
The BBC reports LBC’s owner, Global Radio, has been criticised in recent days over its response to the death of George Floyd, with a spokesman telling the British state broadcaster they had taken “several steps in recent days… including the formation of a BAME committee.”
A report on Mr Farage’s departure from the UK’s heavily left-leaning Guardian cites internal sources at Global saying there had been “fury” inside the station over Mr Farage’s recent comments on what he described the spate of violence and iconoclasm on British streets being pushed by hard-left extremists under the guise of Black Lives Matters protests.
Referring to the new trend of smashing monuments and statues in the United Kingdom, Mr Farage likened the vandals to the Taliban this week. In an allusion to the widespread iconoclasm under Islamic theocratic regimes, the Brexit leader continued: “Unless we get moral leadership quickly our cities won’t be worth living in.”
Discussing the UK chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement, which by their own admission are pursuing hard-left political objectives like abolishing the police force, Mr Farage said the group are a “dangerous, Marxist organisation” which is “hell-bent on anarchy”.