Farage warning as Ukip plot new election success
NIGEL Farage has urged by-election voters to send the Government a message to “get on with Brexit”.
The former Ukip leader also warned Britain to brace for a political “earthquake” at the hands of angry voters in 2020 if the Government fails to deliver Brexit.
His message came as he campaigned yesterday in the Lincolnshire seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham, where Tory MP Stephen Phillips quit last month.
The Leave supporter stood down partly in protest at the Government’s reluctance to involve Parliament more in the Brexit process
He won at the 2015 general election with a majority over Labour of more than 24,000, while Ukip came third.
Delaying
Tory candidate Caroline Johnson remains favourite to hold the seat on Thursday, but Ukip is hopeful its candidate Victoria Ayling could take second place.
Mr Farage tweeted that he was “out campaigning in Sleaford asking people to send the Government a message and get on with Brexit”.
He later urged the judges of the Supreme Court to defend the Prime Minister’s right to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to start formal Brexit negotiations, declaring: “I believe in sovereignty alright, but not the sovereignty of MPs – the sovereignty of people.
“The whole point of the referendum was that on this one issue our representatives decided we could make the decision.
“And do you know what? We did. And what you’re now seeing is an attempt to get that decision taken out of our hands, put through the House of Commons and House of Lords as a means of delaying it, and watering it down.
“If Brexit doesn’t mean Brexit, if we don’t get back control of our borders, the ability to make our laws, our fishing waters, all those things we clearly voted for back in June... if those things don’t happen, then if you think Brexit was a political earthquake in British politics in 2016 then you ain’t seen nothing yet.
“Those 17.4 million people meant it and they’re going to go on meaning it.
“They will change even more fundamentally than they have in the last few years the ways in which they vote, and I think my successor Paul Nuttall has taken over Ukip at a very fortuitous time.”
He added that turmoil in Europe, including the referendum defeat for Italian PM Matteo Renzi, bore out Donald Trump’s comment to him that “Brexit was a smart thing to do”.
Mr Farage said: “We may well have just escaped from a building that is catching on fire.”