Brexit leader Nigel Farage spoke in Washington, D.C. on Friday at the Young America’s Foundation conference, using his remarks to take aim at fake conservatives, slam crony capitalism, and issue a warning over radical Islamic terrorism.
“The one thing I’ve learned is that good conservative values have to be fought for and defended zealously at all time. We face huge enemies with the establishment and the media… and the biggest enemy of all that we face are those that are within in our ranks, those that masquerade as conservatives but actually follow liberal agendas,” Farage said.
His comments come swiftly on the back of Senator John McCain’s rebuffing of a GOP bill to repeal Obamacare, and indeed Mr. Farage named Sen. McCain personally in his remarks.
“Who are the people really trying to stop the [Trump] agenda that won the election from succeeding? It isn’t the Democrats, it isn’t CNN. It’s John McCain and people in his own party,” he said.
Mr. Farage took the stage at the conference which has previously hosted Daniel Hannan MEP, a Conservative Party member in Britain who leans liberal in his politics, and who has previously endorsed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at U.S. elections. Mr. Hannan did not speak this year.
Farage, who had earlier visited the White House, told the audience of mostly students that “a number of chinless wonders in the Conservative cabinet are doing all they can to water down Brexit”. He later remarked upon the news that Tory Minister Michael Gove was appearing to row back on the Brexit campaign’s plan to take back Britain’s territorial fishing waters from the European Union.
He also took aim at former President Obama and Hillary Clinton, accusing the former of a “disgusting act” in threatening Britain with going to the “back of the queue” for a trade deal, and stating of the latter: “I think if Hillary Clinton is an enemy of mine, I’m in a pretty good place”.
Mrs. Clinton had previously attacked Mr. Farage, and criticised her then opponent Donald Trump for appearing alongside him on stage.
“They absolutely hate me and you know what? The feeling’s mutual,” Mr. Farage said of the European Union, urging students to remember that “nation matters”, and despite what they might be called by colleagues, or how they would be attacked on social media for being conservatives, they needed to remain true to these values.
“Those on the hard left of political are plain, blooming, nasty, people,” he remarked.
Mr. Farage hailed the White Houses’s Stephen Miller for his press conference appearance from earlier this week, saying that the RAISE Act to introduce better immigration control into the United States had “echoes… of all the things we said and fought for over the years”.
During the Brexit campaign and before, Mr. Farage had campaigned for a “points-based immigration system”. President Trump’s new plan uses the phrase “merit-based immigration system”.
“We must not allow those who want to bury this subject and take it away to ever get the upper hand,” Farage said of the immigration question, before pivoting onto capitalism, defending the legacies of President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher.
“We have surrendered free market capitalism,” he warned. “It doesn’t exist anymore. We are now living in an age of global corporatism.
“The big banks, and the big businesses effectively own the political process.
“They wrap every single industry in the most complex set of laws that the barriers to entry for small and medium size competitors become impossible”.
Speaking on radical Islam, he said the Brexit and Trump campaigns both benefited from employing honesty on the question of national security.
“CNN are still in denial,” he said. “Hillary Clinton couldn’t even bring herself to use the phrase Islamic terrorism during the campaign”.
Nigel Farage recently wrote the foreword to a new book ‘No Go Zones: How Sharia Law is Coming to a Neighborhood Near You’, available to pre-order on Amazon now.