Farage: ‘Liberal’ EU Is ‘Killing and Destroying’ European Democracy

Farage
Anthony Devlin/Getty
Victoria Friedman

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has said that the self-professed “liberal” European Union in fact “crushes” democracy by taking the power away from European citizens and giving it to a political elite.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Mr Farage, who led his Brexit Party to European Parliament election victory last week, how it is considered a “liberal” position to remain in the “German Empire, which is basically what the EU is,” rather than for the UK to seek independence and freedom.

Mr Farage responded: “Because they claim that, as a European Union, they will deal with climate change. They claim that because they have open borders, this is the modern and liberal approach to the future.

“What they don’t tell you is they are literally killing and destroying something.

“Something so important that, just next week, we are going to celebrate the 75th anniversary of D-Day, when America and Canada and others came to our aid, helped up liberate Europe from Nazism to bring back something called ‘democracy’.

“And what the European Union does, it crushes democracy, it takes decision-making powers away from ordinary people and gives it to un-elected bureaucrats.”

The contempt that Eurocrats feel for ordinary people was expressed by President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker last week, during the EU-wide elections, who scorned “stupid” nationalists for a perceived irrational attachment to their own countries.

Mr Juncker had told the left-wing American news network CNN: “These populists, nationalists, stupid nationalists, they are in love with their own countries and they don’t like the others.”

Remarking on those comments, Mr Farage told Mr Carlson that while Eurocrats had not learnt anything from the results of the European Parliament elections, where populists made significant gains, he laid blame for the democratic deficit in the UK on British politicians.

“The people I blame are British politicians in Westminster who have not had the courage to take back the independence, sovereignty, democracy of our country.

“Last week, I have given them the biggest seismic shock that has been seen in modern British politics and I’ll make you this one promise: if we do not leave the European Union, on October the 31st, I will lead the Brexit Party after that into the next General Election and we will sweep away parties that have dominated British politics for a hundred years.”

After taking one-third of the British vote in European Parliament elections and decimating the voting base of the Conservatives and Labour, the Brexit Party is already making a strong showing in Westminster voting intentions, taking second place — just one point behind the Labour Party — in recent polling.

Ahead of the European elections, Mr Farage called for a “peaceful revolution” to break the political monopoly long-held by the establishment on both sides of the political spectrum, in order to restore the “bond of trust that needs to exist between government and people”.

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