UK’s right-wing Farage vows to end Brexit ‘sell-out’

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 Brexitbackers 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.