Nigel Farage put Jeremy Corbyn on notice that the Brexit Party is coming for Leave-voting constituencies represented by Remain MPs in the Labour heartlands — but warned Boris Johnson to “drop the deal” and strike an electoral pact with him as well.
“It is November the 1st, and yes, we are still members of the European Union,” he began in his campaign launch speech, in reference to the fact that Brexit was supposed to take place on October 31st — the third missed Brexit Day so far.
“Yet more broken promises, and indeed a breakdown of trust and faith not just in politics, but actually in our entire democratic system,” he lamented.
He mocked Labour’s position going into the upcoming December election, which is to negotiate yet another exit deal with the European Union, put it to the country in a second referendum, and then campaign against it in favour of remaining in after all.
“Our highest-scoring region [in the European Parliament elections] was the north-east [of England],” Farage noted pointedly — the area being working-class Labour heartland.
“There are now so many Labour Leave seats represented by Remain Members of Parliament that, be in no doubt, in terms of winning seats, we view those constituencies arond the country as being absolutely among our top targets,” he warned.
He recalled that in the 2015 general election, when Farage led the UK Independence Party, the commentariat took it as read that the UKIP vote came from disaffected Tory voters — but that in fact the UKIP vote had “disproportionately hurt” Labour.
“Actually there wouldn’t have been a Conservative majority if it hadn’t been for the effect of the UKIP vote,” he said.
“And what of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives?” Farage asked.
He conceded that Johnson had “inherited Mrs May’s appalling surrender treaty” with “the clock running down” against him, and that his somewhat revised version of his predecessor’s withdrawal agreement was perhaps the best he could have managed in the circumstances.
But with “Northern Ireland being hived off” from the rest of the United Kingdom the Boris deal is, in Farage’s estimation, “a pretty dreadful breach of the promises he’d made” to Northern Ireland’s Brexit-supporting, Tory-allied Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) at their party conference, where he gave a speech.
“Simply, [Boris’s treaty] is not Brexit,” Farage said, but merely “kicking the can down the road” for years as Britain enters in a “transition” in which it will remain an EU member-state in all but name — minus representation in EU institutions — and negotiations for a final deal will continue,
“We are committing to negotiating for up to three years,” Farage warned, with the EU set on so-called “regulatory alignment” as their final outcome.
Alignment, he said, would mean that “everything from financial services to fisheries would… be tied to EU law. We will not in any way be taking back control of our laws, our moneuy, or our borders, and… if we continue down this route there will not be trade deals with the USA or, I think, any other parts of the world.”
“So I’m going to say this to Boris Johnson: drop the deal. Drop the deal, because it’s not Brexit. Drop the deal because as these weeks go by and people discover what it is that you’ve signed up to, they will not like it,” Farage declared.
He added that he would be “more than willing” to support a Johnson government in pursuit of an electoral pact to return a “Leave alliance” to Parliament, provided the Prime Minister commits to a clean, no-deal break with the EU if they refuse to agree a Canada-style trade agreement with no “political linkage”.
“The only way to solve this is to build a Leave alliance across this country,” he insisted, saying that ideally this would encompass some Labour Brexiteers as well as the Tories, Brexit Party, and DUP.