Farage Tells Breitbart: After Britain’s Hard Lockdown, Being in Free Florida Is ‘Refreshing’

Brexit’s Nigel Farage praised the “brilliant” Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and the levels of personal freedom in the state of Florida in comments to the Breitbart News Daily show as he embarks on a U.S.-wide speaking tour to fire up conservative activists during the Biden years.

Speaking to Breitbart News Network editor in chief Alex Marlow on the Breitbart News Daily show on Sirius XM Patriot, Brexit leader Nigel Farage compared the differing situations between his native United Kingdom and the United States, particularly the state of Florida which he has been visiting. Asked about the state of the lockdown in the UK — and in particular, the loss of freedom to meet and drink in pubs and bars in recent months — Mr Farage expressed concern, but noted there was a better way.

He told the Breitbart News Daily show:

I just worry that the [British] government has taken so much control of our lives and seems to be reluctant to give it back. That’s why it is so refreshing to have been in Florida the last few days, where Governor DeSantis has done a brilliant job.

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The differences between the UK and Floridian approach to coronavirus have indeed been considerable. The UK government has vacillated wildly, at first locking down its own population while leaving its borders to all international travellers wide open, and then later — too late, some claimed — cracking down on its borders too, making going on holiday a crime.

Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis, on the other hand, has pursued an aggressively pro-freedom approach in reopening the state economy. The state never introduced a mask mandate, unlike the United Kingdom which first told people not to wear masks as there was no evidence they worked, and then later made them a legal requirement in public places. Despite its bullish stance, it records fewer new cases of coronavirus week in week out per capita than some Democrat U.S. states that have.

DeSantis has also ruled out vaccine passports as a “terrible idea”, even using an executive order outright banning their use. The Florida governor observed: “Requiring so-called COVID-19 vaccine passports for taking part in everyday life — such as attending a sporting event, patronizing a restaurant, or going to a movie theater— would create two cases of citizens based on vaccination.”

Similar arguments of inadvertently creating a two-tier medical apartheid society in a health service state were made in the United Kingdom too, but to no avail. The British government — again, after rapidly and frequently changing its mind over whether they would be deployed — is now fast-moving towards vaccine passports, both for foreign travel and almost certainly for doing everyday things like visiting public venues, as well.

It is not in any way surprising, perhaps, that Britain’s instinctively statist establishment rushed to award itself more powers under the pretext of coronavirus, but as Mr Farage ruefully observed, the real shock came from how easily the traditionally freedom-loving British people had been persuaded to go along with the plan. The erstwhile leader of Britain’s UK Independence, Brexit, and Reform parties — and now retired from frontline electoral politics but focussing his energies on raising the public profile of selected causes like freedom and the Chinese threat — said:

…the bigger government gets and the more of a role it plays in our lives, sadly the more people are prepared to accept diktats from government. I would never have believed, I have always thought, the independently minded British wouldn’t put up with lockdowns like this. You see the opinion polls say that overall the government still has majority support for this kind of action. I’m astonished by it, I’m depressed by it, but that’s where we are and getting some of these freedoms back is going to be a very big battle.

During his time in Florida, Mr Farage found time to visit “old friend Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago”, where the pair discussed the 2024 Presidential race, coronavirus developments, and Queen Elizabeth II. Farage also took time to poke fun at the UK mainstream media, which has reacted in some quarters with horror at the Brexit leader travelling internationally, teasing them that: “I’m really sorry to upset my friends at the Daily Mail who keep writing articles about me being in St Maarten ‘being on holiday’, but I did tell them the truth. I am now in Miami… it wasn’t just a holiday, I was actually working!”