It may still be Farage\u2019s permanently open mouth that trips him up, however. His new plan to strip EU citizens living in Britain of their right to claim universal credit \u2013 and thus start a new Brexit trade war with Brussels \u2013 risks such catastrophic consequences that even Kemi Badenoch thinks it is a bad idea.<\/p>\n
Farage refused to say whether Reform has modelled the damage this might do to the fragile UK economy, which means that he hasn\u2019t bothered. \u201cMake Brexit work\u201d might be a stupid slogan, but \u201cMake Brexit worse\u201d is a disaster.<\/p>\n
Yet Nigel\u2019s habit of not thinking through the consequences of his own actions may end up helping those who oppose him.\u00a0The other day, he defied the odds by saying something interesting \u2013 so interesting, in fact, that you could tell he\u2019d not worked out what it might mean. Something that sounds even more interesting when you hear the excellent but despairing speech by former PM John Major at the London School of Economics the other night.<\/p>\n
Major said: \u201cOver half of the British electorate now believe it was a mistake to leave the European Union, and less than one third now supports having done so. Among the young, support for Brexit falls as low as 13%. The trend is inexorable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is why it is so disappointing that both government and opposition are so wretchedly timid in their policy ambitions, that Labour and the Tories are terrified by a residual Brexit vote\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cMuch though I wish otherwise, I do not foresee an early return to full membership of the European Union\u2026 a full return to Europe is almost certainly unobtainable in any likely parliament until a younger generation of pro-European politicians comes to power, and the Brexiteer voice again retreats to the fringes\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ah, but what if it was a Brexiteer coming to power that resulted in a full return to Europe? At a press conference last week, Farage probably had leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (which he supports), or bringing back the death penalty (which he opposes) in mind when he said this:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe really big electoral reform I favour, and it would need to be a high bar, but I do think that the British people, if they feel the political class are out of touch with them substantially on a major issue, should have the chance through petition to call a national referendum on a subject of their choosing.\u201d<\/p>\n
There could be no silver lining to this clod becoming prime minister. But wouldn\u2019t it be the most poetic justice of all if Nigel Farage slipped into Downing Street in 2029, guaranteed a referendum by petition on the issue that the country cared most about \u2013 and then watched the silenced majority secure a vote on rejoining the EU?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It may still be Farage\u2019s permanently open mouth that trips him up, however. His new plan to strip…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,384,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-583199","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-nigel-farage","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115583814519393300","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}