REES-MOGG’S SISTER... FARAGE’S SECRET WEAPON
‘Democratic revolution’
NIGEL Farage yesterday vowed to put the ‘fear of God’ into Westminster as he unveiled the sister of Jacob Rees-Mogg as a candidate for his new Brexit party.
Annunziata Rees-Mogg, who was on David Cameron’s A-list of Tory parliamentary candidates, will stand in the European elections next month after defecting.
Mr Farage said he wanted to stage a ‘democratic revolution’ against a political class that had betrayed voters as he launched the Brexit Party in Coventry.
It will field 70 candidates in the European Parliament elections that are due to take place on May 23 after EU leaders agreed a six-month delay to Brexit.
Miss Rees-Mogg, who twice stood unsuccessfully to be a Tory MP, said it was an opportunity for voters to show the politicians were not ‘our masters’ but there to ‘do our bidding’.
Her brother, the chairman of the European Research Group, said: ‘The Brexit Party is fortunate to have such a high calibre candidate but I am sorry that Annunziata has left the Conservative Party.’
Miss Rees-Mogg, 40, said she had supported the Tories since she was five. ‘I joined the Conservative Party in 1984 and this is not a decision I have made lightly – to leave a party for which I have fought at every election since 1987, from Maggie Thatcher through to Theresa May,’ she added. ‘I know which one I’d rather have representing us now.’
She said: ‘The point at which our Prime Minister will not listen, not only to her membership, but will not listen to the people of her country... I can’t sit by and let her do it.
‘We’ve got to rescue our democracy, we have got to show that the people of this country have a say in how we are run.’
Miss Rees-Mogg, a former secretary at Tatler magazine, stood for the Tories in 2005 and 2010 – ignoring advice from party officials at the time to call herself Nancy so she seemed less posh. Mr Farage yesterday said Britain had become a nation of ‘lions led by donkeys’ and that the campaign marked the start of a fightback against the political class.
‘I do believe that we can win these European elections and that we can again start to put the fear of God into our Members of Parliament in Westminster,’ he said. ‘They deserve nothing less than that after the way they’ve treated us over this betrayal. Our task and our mission is to change politics for good.
‘I said that if I ever did come back into the political fray, next time it would be no more Mr Nice Guy, and I mean it. I am angry about what has happened. I said many years ago I wanted to cause an earthquake in British politics.
‘Now what I am fighting for, and with your support what we will attempt to achieve, is a democratic revolution in British politics.’
Mr Farage, who quit Ukip in December, denied that the two competing parties would split the pro-Brexit vote. He argued that ‘middle England, decent people’ would no longer vote for Ukip as it had become ‘completely obsessed’ by Islam, had a ‘fairly loutish fringe’ and was associated ‘with violence, criminal records and thuggery’.
Mr Farage claimed to have raised more than £750,000 in donations in just ten days. He said that he had been ‘astonished by the quality’ of people who had put themselves forward to stand as Brexit Party candidates.
He added: ‘We have many people ... who do deals every day, who do deals every week. It’s time the political class who’ve shown themselves incapable of doing a good deal were pushed aside and replaced by those who know how the real world works.’
Mrs May has said she does not want to fight the European elections, but will have to unless