Farage: Labour Backing Remain ‘Opens Door’ to Brexit Party in Heartland

NOTTINGHAM, ENGLAND - APRIL 20: Brexit party chairman Richard Tice (L), Nigel Farage and A
Christopher Furlong/Getty
Victoria Friedman

Nigel Farage has said that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party cares more about the London metropolitan elite than its working-class Leave voters in the north and Wales.

On Tuesday, Mr Corbyn announced that his party would be backing a second referendum — a so-called ‘confirmatory vote’ — on any Tory government deal or in the face of a no-deal exit and would campaign for Remain, following pressure from socialist trades unions.

That evening on his LBC radio show, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage warned that as a result, Labour would be “devastated” in the next General Election for “betraying” the five million Labour voters who backed Brexit.

Writing in the Express on Wednesday, Mr Farage criticised Mr Corbyn for giving in to the “political pygmies” in the Remainer-dominated front bench, declaring the party “the radical wing of the Remainer establishment”.

The politician also attacked Corbyn for abandoning his principles, remaking that the socialist had historically been against EU integration, having “learnt his left-wing Euroscepticism at the knee of his Labour hero, Tony Benn”.

Saying that Mr Corbyn had broken the 2017 Labour manifesto commitment to “respect the referendum result”, Mr Farage remarked: “While they celebrate at their north London supper parties tonight, the party that claims to represent Leave-voting working-class areas like the North of England and South Wales will be met with more anger than they can possibly understand.

“Labour has effectively announced that it cares more about the opinion of the new metropolitan middle classes than about its traditional base of support.”

Noting that almost 70 per cent of Labour MPs represent seats that voted leave and more than 90 per cent of those MPs back Remain, Mr Farage said that Corbyn has “opened the door” to his Brexit Party.

“Labour is now the party of Islington, not Islwyn. It’s the party of Hampstead, not Huddersfield. Its final abandonment of Brexit and millions of Leave voters has opened the door to the Brexit Party in many parts of the country in the most extraordinary way.”

Ahead of the European Parliament elections, Mr Farage had pledged a “northern attack” on Brexit-backing constituencies in the north and midlands held by Labour Remainers, pledging to work to deliver the Brexit vote that Labour is betraying.

Two Labour councillors have already defected to the Brexit Party, while Labour is set to lose senior Brexiteer MP Kate Hoey, who will step down at the next General Election.

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