Farage quits politics, again
Nigel Farage has announced he is quitting politics after resigning as leader of the Reform UK party. The former MEP claimed that he would not come back again – as he did after two previous resignations – because Brexit “won’t be reversed”.
In a video message to his followers on Twitter, he said: “We’ve done it, we’ve achieved it. For me, I feel my political career, in the sense of actively leading a political party, fighting election campaigns... I think now’s the moment to say I have done it.”
He said he would continue to support Reform UK after handing over leadership to the party’s chairman Richard Tice. However Mr Farage warned that he was “not going away” as he was going to continue with his media career.
He also said he wanted to campaign against “the increasing influence of the Chinese communist party over our whole way of life” and “the indoctrination of children at school”, which he claimed meant many pupils were “encouraged to hate this country”. Mr Farage also claimed he cared strongly about environmental causes such as the health of our oceans, adding: “Let’s get planting trees!”
He said: “I’m still going to fight for change, but for me after 30 years, that’s enough of active politics. I have actually achieved what I set out to do, and I don’t think there are many people in politics that can say that... At the end of the day it really was worth it.”
Paying tribute to the people who voted for him and supported his parties over the last 30 years, he said: “That is what completely changed British politics, that is what got us our independence. It took a long time but we did deliver.”
Mr Farage was originally a member of the Conservative Party but left after John Major signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.
He first became leader of the UK Independence party in 2006, only to quit in 2009 in a failed bid to be elected as an MP. After returning as leader in 2010, he resigned a second time after the Brexit referendum in 2016, only to become leader of the Brexit Party in 2019. It changed its name to Reform UK in January 2020.