Farage heckled after accusing MEPs of acting like ‘the mafia’

Nigel Farage was heckled in the European Parliament after accusing MEPs of “behaving like the mafia” over the conditions of Brexit.

The former Ukip leader was told to retract his remark by the Parliament’s president, Italian Antonio Tajani, and said that, in respect of national sensitivities, he would instead brand them “gangsters”.

The row came as the Parliament heard a string of senior MEPs insist Britain cannot enjoy “the same or better conditions” in its relations with the EU as full member states after Brexit.

Referring to the European Council’s suggestion that Spain should be given a veto over future agreements on Gibraltar, Mr Farage said: “We believe in national selfdetermination, your aim and ambition is to destroy nation-state democracy. Gibraltar is clearly a deal-breaker on these terms.

“You have shown yourselves by these demands to be vindictive, to be nasty. All I can say is thank goodness we are leaving. You are behaving like the mafia. You think we are a hostage – we are not, we are free to go.”

The European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, told MEPs he expected the UK to return to the EU in the future, when a younger generation recognises withdrawal as “a loss of time, a waste of energy and a stupidity”.

MEPs in Strasbourg were debating the European Parliament’s red lines for any withdrawal agreement in two years.