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London, June 24
Britain’s vote to leave the European Union is a triumph for Nigel Farage, the abrasive anti-immigration politician who tapped into a deep well of popular anger that rivals failed to understand.
On a night that seemed to start badly for the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), with the last opinion polls predicting defeat for the Leave camp in Thursday’s referendum, Farage said at first it looked like Remain would win.
But it ended with victory for him and on Friday morning he declared jubilantly that the vote for a British exit from the EU, or Brexit, heralded a new dawn for the nation. “The EU is failing, the EU is dying. I hope we’ve knocked the first brick out of the wall. I hope this is the first step towards a Europe of sovereign nation states,” he said, predicting that the Netherlands and Denmark would go next.
Not for the first time causing outrage, he said the result had been achieved “without a single bullet being fired”.
The comment drew accusations of insensitivity after the killing of pro-EU lawmaker Jo Cox last week, after which a man charged with her murder told a court his name was “death to traitors, freedom for Britain”. But with his blunt approach, Farage has finally achieved the goal he has pursued relentlessly in his 25 years in politics.
“It’s been a hell of a long journey, this,” he told reporters, recalling that in the first election he contested, in 1994, he came second-from-last, beating only comedy candidate Screaming Lord Sutch by a handful of votes.
“Now there are 17 million people that voted for Brexit. It’s a victory for ordinary people, decent people. It’s a victory against the big merchant banks, against the big businesses and against big politics.” Farage had languished for years on the fringes of British politics. A member of the European Parliament since 1999, he was best known for trying to disrupt it from within, once telling then European Council President Herman Van Rompuy to his face that he had “the charisma of a damp rag”. — Reuters
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