Farage: It’d be better to delay Brexit

NIGEL Farage claimed it would be better to delay Brexit than to accept Boris Johnson’s deal with Brussels.

The Brexit Party leader savaged the compromise agreed between the Prime Minister and the EU at a summit yesterday. He even appeared to back the law which will force Mr Johnson to delay Britain’s departure from the EU.

Under the so- called Benn Act, the UK must ask for an extension to the Brexit timetable to January next year should a deal not be passed by October 19. Mr Farage, who favours No Deal, tweeted after EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said there should be no ‘prolongation’ of Britain’s departure.

It prompted Mr Farage to call Mr Juncker ‘an unelected, retiring bureaucrat’, adding: ‘He is overriding the Benn Act. The EU shows itself to be a thuggocracy – power without accountability.’ Earlier yesterday, Mr Farage told Sky News: ‘Look, I would much rather we had an extension and a chance of a general election than accept this dreadful new EU treaty.’

MPs are set to vote on the 11th hour agreement in an historic session in the Commons tomorrow. A deal passing would remove the Brexit Party’s reason to exist at the next election. Mr Farage has previously suggested the Tories enter an electoral pact with his party.

He said yesterday: ‘If withdrawal agreement four fails on Saturday, as I believe it will, I think then Boris Johnson as Prime Minister would drop the idea of this new treaty and there is a possibility of putting together a Leave alliance for the next general election. I think there is an opportunity here for a Brexit alliance... that would win a big majority in Parliament.’

But a senior Tory source said Mr Farage was ‘only interested in an outcome that maximises his electoral opportunities – not what delivers for Britain’.