‘Patronising Snob!’: Farage Blasts MEP Who Said Leavers ‘Didn’t Know What They Voted For’

Farage
Anthony Devlin/Getty
Victoria Friedman

Nigel Farage has branded a Liberal Democrat MEP a “patronising, stuck-up snob” after she said Leavers “didn’t know what they were voting on” in the 2016 referendum.

Liberal Democrat MEP Judith Bunting had said during a session of the European Parliament on Wednesday that while the British people voted to leave the EU, “they didn’t know what they were voting on and they were misled”.

In response, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said: “You patronising, stuck-up snob! How dare you tell people they didn’t know what they were voting for? They knew exactly what they were voting for.

“They were voting against 50 years of people like you lying to them. They did it. You promised you’d enact it, and you — the Lib Dems and others — have betrayed the greatest democratic exercise in the history of our nation.”

In attempts to de-legitimise the referendum, left-progressive news outlets and campaigners have claimed the vote was the result of racism or ignorance. Most recently, Remainers also argue the country needs a second referendum in case Britons have changed their minds.

One common statement is that Britons did not vote to leave the Single Market — despite Nick Clegg, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and David Cameron having said many times during the 2016 campaign that that would be the case. Mr Cameron, who backed Remain, had said voting to leave the EU meant voting to leave the Single Market at least 28 times.

When BBC journalist Andrew Neil confronted Mr Clegg on the fact, he could not refute it. Instead, the former Liberal Democrat leader shifted to the accusation of voter ignorance, saying: “People don’t watch the interviews between you and me. They don’t watch Andrew Marr on Sunday all the time.”

Mr Farage’s exchange with Ms Bunting came after the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt called Prime Minister Boris Johnson a “traitor” for trying to take the UK out of the EU in a clean break.

The MEP for South East England also told European politicians: “We don’t want your treaty in any form, even with Mr Johnson’s proposed amendments. The referendum was very clear: we voted to leave the institutions of the European Union and to be free.

“We’ve had enough of being talked down to by you [Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier], insulted by Messrs [Donald] Tusk and indeed [Jean-Claude] Juncker. We will never accept a German chancellor attempting to annex a part of our nation. We simply won’t have it.

“The good news is, your wretched treaty is off the table, support for a clean-break Brexit is growing, and it will be the winning ticket at the next general election.”

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