Farage to EU: ‘Do You Really Want Me Back? Reject Brexit Delay, Get UK Out’

Former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader, Brexit campaigner and member of the European P
FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP/Getty
Victoria Friedman

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has told the EU that unless they want to see his return and want their business dominated by Brexit for years to come, they must reject any Article 50 extension and “get Britain out!”

Mr Farage told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, “I know that you are all getting terribly excited over what the House of Commons may do in the course of the next week, and we know what they’ll do. They’ll come back with some form of agreement of a customs union and the continued free movement of people.

“But even if they do that, the one thing this is inevitable is that we are headed for an Article 50 extension. And I think you should ask yourselves: do you really want that?

“Do you want Brexit to utterly dominate the next couple of years of your business to the exclusion of your other ambitions?

“Do you really want the United Kingdom to contest the European (Parliament) elections? To send back a very large number of Leave MEPs just at a time when you are ‘fighting populism,’ as you see it, across the continent?” the Brexit Party leader asked Wednesday morning.

European populists are set to make major gains in May’s elections, with the European political establishment concerned that it could upend their progressive plans to force nations into ever closer union and centralise power in Brussels.

So concerned are Eurocrats that a longer delay could pull the UK into this spring’s elections and result in Farage leading “anti-elite parties” in the next term’s European Parliament, that Brussels bureaucrats are said to be attempting to block the UK’s participation in the outcome of a longer Brexit delay.

On the basis of those fears, Mr Farage asked Wednesday morning, “Do you really want me back in this place?” in response to which there was a number of groans and exclamations of “no!”

“I would say to you to all of you and national leaders reject the British extension beyond the 12th of April.

“Get Britain out and we can all just get on with the rest of our lives,” he said.

The Remainer-dominated House of Commons has ruled out the UK leaving the EU without a deal in a clean break and backs pushing for further extensions of Article 50, the legal mechanism for leaving the EU.

MPs are due tonight to take part in a series of indicative (non-binding) votes on Brexit alternatives including a super-soft Brexit with Customs Union and Single Market access, a second referendum, and stopping Brexit altogether by withdrawing Article 50.

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