Right-wing leader vows Brexit won’t be sold out

Farage plans bus tour to combat ‘cowardly’ May

LONDON — In Britain, there is a growing sense of Brexit deja vu.

Two years after the country voted to leave the European Union, emotional arguments about membership in the bloc are raging as fiercely as they did during the 2016 referendum.

With seven months until Britain officially leaves the bloc, negotiations faltering, chances are rising of an acrimonious divorce — and the one thing that pro- and anti-EU forces have in common is that they are both unhappy.

Former U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage announced Saturday that he was returning to political campaigning in a bid to derail British Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan for future ties with the EU.

Farage, the right-winger who helped lead the successful “leave” campaign in 2016, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that he would join a cross-country bus tour by the group Leave Means Leave to oppose May’s “cowardly sell-out.”

Referring to U.K. politicians and civil servants, he said “unless challenged, these anti-democrats will succeed in frustrating the result” of the referendum.

Negotiations on future relations between the U.K. and the bloc have faltered, largely due to divisions within May’s Conservative government over how close an economic relationship to seek with EU.

Last month the government finally produced a plan, proposing to stick close to EU regulations in return for free trade in goods. That infuriated Brexit-backers such as Farage and former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who say it would leave the U.K. tethered to the bloc and unable to strike new trade deals around the world.

Opponents of Brexit say that, even if the EU accepts May’s plan — which appears unlikely — it would still erect barriers between Britain and the EU, its biggest trading partner.

Meanwhile, time is running out. Britain and the EU say they aim to hammer out an agreement on divorce terms and future trade by October — or, at the latest, December — so that it can be approved by all individual EU countries before the U.K. leaves the bloc on March 29.

This week Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics put the chances of getting a Brexit deal at 50-50, a figure echoed by other EU leaders.

Nigel Farage