ROILING BREXIT FURTHER, FARAGE QUITS UKIP

Tells reporters he’ll watch Brexit talks ‘like a hawk’ UKIP chief joins Cameron

NIGEL Farage resigned as leader of the UK Independence Party, saying that his victory in the referendum on leaving the European Union represented a career high to go out on.

Farage, 52, follows Prime Minister David Cameron as the second party leader to quit following the June 23 vote to unhitch the UK from the EU after more than four decades. Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who led the Vote Leave campaign, said last week that he wouldn’t seek to contest the Conservative Party leadership and replace Cameron.

“I now feel that I’ve done my bit, that I couldn’t possibly achieve more,” Farage told reporters in London on Monday. “It’s right that I should now stand aside as leader. What I said during the referendum campaign is I want my country back. What I’m saying today is I want my life back. And it begins right now.”

The referendum result marked a personal success for Farage, who in the early 1990s helped to found a party later described by Cameron as “a bunch of fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists.” That represented a misjudgment as the prime minister found himself having to turn more euroskeptic to maintain his party’s appeal to voters, ultimately calling the referendum on EU membership which sank him.

While UKIP won just one seat in last year’s general election, it was able to rally supporters in part because of Farage’s sound bites, as well as his partiality to a pint of beer and a cigarette. He began referendum night predicting defeat, only to mark the dawn declaring Britain’s “Independence Day.”

A former commodities broker, Farage helped set up UKIP after then Prime Minister John Major signed the Maastricht Treaty, which paved the way for a more integrated EU.

Willing to take on political correctness, Farage often drew accusations of racism. Following the January 2015 terrorist shootings in and around Paris, he sparked outrage among mainstream politicians when he spoke in the European Parliament of a homegrown “fifth column” of Islamic militants bent on taking down “our Judeo-Christian” way of life. Bloomberg

I now feel that I have done my bit, that I couldn’t possibly achieve more NIGEL FARAGE, Ex-leader, UK Independence Party EU exit could cut Britain’s GDP by anywhere between 1.5-4.5 percentage points by 2019 CHRISTINE LAGARDE Managing Director, International Monetary Fund