FARAGE SHOULD HAVE QUIT WHILE HE WAS AHEAD

NOW that we are fully out of the EU, what will Nigel Farage do with his Brexit Party? Actually, we don’t need to ask, because the man himself has told us. In November, he applied to the Electoral Commission to have the party renamed Reform UK.

And its main aim? Mr Farage set that out, too, declaring it would campaign to end the mandatory social restrictions imposed by the Government to suppress Covid-19.

He said Reform UK was fully behind ‘the Great Barrington Declaration’, which advocated a policy of herd immunity through infection, while somehow ‘shielding’ those thought most vulnerable from all the younger folk who were going to get the disease.

‘That way, we build immunity in the population,’ he wrote. The policy of intermittent lockdowns, he scoffed, ‘is all about playing for time, in the hope that a vaccine miraculously comes along’.

That was published on November 1. Nine days later, Sir John Bell of the Government’s vaccine taskforce had his ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ moment on the BBC when the final results of the Pfizer vaccine tests came through, showing 95 per cent efficacy.

Farage also claimed that ‘suicides are soaring’ as a result of the lockdowns. This, too, was rubbish. Again, just days after Farage wrote that, the Government adviser on suicide prevention, Professor Louis Appleby, declared: ‘Today, we’re releasing suicide data for 2020 covering several parts of England. The month by month figures are reassuring: there has been no rise in suicide following lockdown.’ Farage went on to argue that Tory policy had condemned to misery ‘88-year-old ladies who cannot see their relatives and naturally wonder: what is the point of life?’ Not only are those old ladies now being given the vaccinations Farage couldn’t even imagine, his own preferred policy of letting the virus rip and ‘shielding the vulnerable’ would have isolated the elderly from their families even more. The most puzzling aspect is that in mid- March Farage had eloquently criticised the Government for flirting with a ‘herd immunity’ strategy, before changing course: ‘I found myself feeling more depressed than I had been in my adult life by the words of the chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance. He said that 60 per cent of the UK population needed to get Covid-19 to establish herd immunity.

‘I worked out pretty quickly,’ Farage continued, ‘that this tactic would trigger in the region of 400,000 deaths. Since then, I am pleased to say the Government policy has changed. Downing Street has recognised that a rapid spread of Covid-19 would overwhelm the NHS. The penny has dropped.’

Odd that Farage should have turned around 180 degrees, in precisely the wrong direction and with the worst possible timing. This political gambler should have quit while he was ahead.