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Home » Nigel Farage is a happy man as the Brits wave “buh-bye” to the EU

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Nigel Farage is a happy man as the Brits wave “buh-bye” to the EU — 32 Comments

  1. I loved it! They marched out waving Union Jacks. May Europe return to a “common market” and ditch the undemocratic union.

  2. You cannot underestimate the butthurt of people finding out they are NOT on the “right side of history.” The animosity toward Brexit is based on the conviction among Western elites that the EU was the future, that ultimately all the world would be ruled by a single massive central government with those elites, of course, in charge.

    Mike

  3. I learned from that speech that Ireland voted down joining the EU in their first referendum, and then they just held a re-vote which passed. (Was that a Lisbon treaty vote?) To quote Farage, it’s anti-democratic. Then I noticed that the presiding official lady had an Irish accent.

  5. That Englishman Nigel sure does a fantastic job of speaking English. I enjoyed the cadence, pronunciation, and the entire delivery up to the point where they cut him off, told his contingent to put away their flags or get the hell out which they did waving their flags. Excellent example of a truly meaningful exit.

  6. So can it be that Brexit and Impeachmas happen on the same day and then we get Superbowl weekend with a half-time interview between Sean Hannity and Donald Trump?

    As the progs favorite President, President Bartlett of The West Wing, was apt to say, “What’s next?”

  7. That’s the third time I’ve viewed Farage’s speech at various websites. Guess I like Mr. Farage’s speechmaking.

    Farage: “We love Europe. We just hate the European Union.It’s as simple as that.”

    Irish EU member who cut off Farage’s microphone: “We should not hate anyone, or any nation, or any people.”

    Note that Farage did not express hatred for neither a person, nor a nation, nor a people. He expressed hate for an overweening bureaucracy.

  8. Old Texan:

    Yes, the Brexit exit was performed by Farage with great style and flair. He’s been working for this for so long! And McGuinness’s expression was priceless as well.

    So many British politicians are fabulous at public speaking, and he’s one of them.

  9. That churlish chairwoman, by demanding that Farage and company put away their Union Jacks and then cutting Farage’s microphone, explained in that brief moment why the UK won’t be the last nation to exit the European Union.

    I look forward to the creation of a global consortium of the English-speaking nations.

  10. Congratulation to the Brexiteers! Here’s looking to a bright future for the UK.

    I wonder if this is the first nail in the EU’s coffin? Remember that Milton Friedman gave the Euro 10 years because he posited that one cannot have a common currency where one does not have a common political will. While his timeline was clearly wrong, IMO his theory was correct. Political will has been dictated from the top down from Brussels rather than rising from the bottom up. To paraphrase Farage, whooda thunk populism was so popular?

    We have already heard rumblings about leaving the EU from Poland and (I believe, the Czech Republic). The Poles and Czechs like being dictated to from Brussels about as much as Texas would like cowtowing to Sacramento.

    The net five years should prove interesting.

  11. I have long admired Nigel Farage, and he certainly didn’t disappoint today. I think Eastern Europeans are poised to leave the EU, and Greece has nothing to gain by being chained to the euro. As always, interesting times.

  12. I heard his oration. I was hoping he would end it with “ Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, free at last.” It was still a good speech.

  13. Hoping hoping hoping. Next up: Italy (a charter member). Hoping for two things: a demonstration effect as Britain prospers outside the EU and revulsion as creatures like Guy Verhofstadt start agitating for countries to be stripped of their fiscal autonomy and of their option to leave.

  15. “. . . Greece has nothing to gain by being chained to the euro.” [parker @ 4:39]

    Greece is a perennially indebted nation; the drachma might well be an economic joke if it still existed. (Remember the PIIGS countries: Portugal; Ireland; Italy; Greece; Spain). This has always been a problem within the EU because the Mediterranean countries rely on the union for an economic stability they, themselves, lack while the Northern countries’ citizens (especially Germany) see the Mediterranean countries as millstones not puling their share of the economic load.

    Whether justified or not, these attitudes not only undermine Friedman’s requirement for a “common political will” but actually go further to create a foundation of divisiveness that bodes long-term ill for the maintenance of unification.

    A brief Wiki FYI on Grexit:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_withdrawal_from_the_eurozone

    and:

    • Accession to the [European] Community was regarded by Greece as a powerful factor that would contribute to the development and modernization of the Greek economy and society.

    • The European Community’s reaction to the Greek application . . . proposed the institutionalization of a pre-accession transition period before full institutional integration, in order that the necessary economic reforms would be implemented.

    https://www.mfa.gr/en/foreign-policy/greece-in-the-eu/greeces-course-in-the-eu.html

    and:

    PIIGS is an acronym for Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain, which were the weakest economies in the eurozone during the European debt crisis.

    https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/piigs.asp

  16. Whatever merits there may seemingly have been to staying in the EU before the vote, the words and actions of the remainers since the vote make it very clear the Brexit was absolutely the correct decision. A huge chunk of the British political and intellectual establishment was revealed to have little to no faith in democracy and utter contempt for anyone who differed from their socially approved attitudes.

    To paraphrase John Cleese, I’m not sure London will ever be an English city again but at least the rest of England can still be England in the future.

    Mike

  17. Cap’n Rusty on January 31, 2020 at 3:06 pm said:
    That churlish chairwoman, by demanding that Farage and company put away their Union Jacks and then cutting Farage’s microphone, explained in that brief moment why the UK won’t be the last nation to exit the European Union.

    * * *
    Somewhat similar to US Independents discovering that the Democrats and the Left have no sense of humor, as evidenced by the “fact checking” of the Babylon Bee.

    Satan cannot abide laughter.

  19. Commenter at PowerLine a couple of days ago:
    Mr. Fever Head • 2 days ago
    Why in the world did they make everyone’s first wife the chairwoman of the EU?

  20. A lovely video, by a remarkable man.
    He went there first in 1999, which I didn’t know.

    https://britannianews.co.uk/2020/01/31/nigel-farage-gives-lbc-a-tour-of-the-european-parliament-on-his-last-day-in-strasbourg/

    Nigel Farage gave LBC a tour around the European Parliament in Strasbourg on his last there ahead of Brexit. He revealed the first time he arrived in the EU parliament, there weren’t any signs so he kept getting lost. Nigel also gave LBC a tour of his private MEP office and explained that 12 times a year the contents of his office in Brussels are packed up, put on a lorry and driven to Strasbourg where it is unpacked for four days and then repacked.

    He remarks that the Strasbourg edifice, which is huge, only functions as the EU Parliament 48 days a year, which creates a massive carbon footprint with all the moving.
    Yeah.

    LBC stands for “Leading Britain’s Conversation.” Their article sidebars look quite interesting if you’re, you know, interested in British conversation.

  22. This quick exit with Boris sure makes Teresa May look inept, and imagine she was such a favorite of the queen. It was obvious that the EU was a favorite of the Queen even though she was enjoined from saying so. She had her dressmaker whip up an outfit in the same shade of blue the EU flag uses and the hat had a spray of yellowflowers resembling the stars. I wonder if she thought the monarchy could fly under the radar if the UK were in the EU where as now bad behavior by royals is threatening their existence.

  24. This quick exit with Boris sure makes Teresa May look inept, and imagine she was such a favorite of the queen. It was obvious that the EU was a favorite of the Queen even though she was enjoined from saying so.

    You know these things just how?

  25. Jees art Deco all you have to do to get informed is READ the internet. Uk daily mail has queen stories practically every day & pictures too so you can get by just reading the captions if the entire article is too long for ya dude!

  26. Jees art Deco all you have to do to get informed is READ the internet. Uk daily mail has queen stories practically every day & pictures too so you can get by just reading the captions if the entire article is too long for ya dude!

    IOW, you haven’t a clue.

  28. Art Deco; Molly NH:

    No one has “a clue” what the queen really thinks. But it’s still perfectly reasonable to mention something one read in the paper as an indication, because unless a person is the queen’s confidante or a mind-reader, that’s the only source of information we have. Doesn’t mean it’s correct, of course. That’s understood.

  30. The French are part of the Left’s walking dead – they never give up.

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/01/31/macron-brexit-historical-wake-up-call-whole-europe/

    The French president, who is an avid supporter of the globalist-progressive European Project, made the remarks during a pre-recorded television address to the people of France, aired hours before the UK officially leaves the European Union.

    “This departure is a shock,” Mr Macron said in comments reported by Ouest-France. “It is a historic wake-up call which must be heard in each of our countries, be heard by the whole of Europe, and make us think.”

    However, rather than Brexit being a time for reflection and of considering returning sovereignty to the people of Europe, Mr Macron maintains that the continent needs more EU, more super-state bureaucracy, not less.

    Also blaming “lies” told by Leave campaigners, the progressive French president said: “We must remember at all times what lies can lead to in our democracies.

    “This Brexit is possible, has been possible, and comes into force in a few hours, because we have too often made Europe a scapegoat for our own difficulties and also because we have not changed our Europe enough. More than ever, we need Europe.”

    President Macron said to those backing a Frexit (a French exit): “I would be lying to you to say this evening that the future of our country could be built on less Europe.”

    The head of state insisted on the need to “rebuild a clearer European Project where the desire to leave Europe will no longer be the answer to difficulties”.

  31. https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/01/31/a-glorious-victory-for-democracy/

    But all sides in the Brexit Day discussion are wrong. Baker and other timid Brexiteers are wrong to suggest we should play down the significance of this day lest we offend Remainers, and the Brexitphobic wing of the elite is wrong to say these celebrations are a screech of populist arrogance against the defeated side in the referendum. No, the reason this day must be marked — loudly, firmly and colourfully — is because it represents a glorious victory for democracy. What is being celebrated today is the defence of democracy against one of the greatest threats it has faced in modern times.

    One of the peculiarities of the Brexit era, and of the contemporary era more broadly, is that very small and very unrepresentative sections of society are in control of the political and moral narrative. So even as 17.4million people, the largest electoral bloc in our history, voted for Brexit, and stood by their vote for Brexit in the face of the most extraordinary campaign of demonisation that I can remember, still the Remainer elites got to write the story of Brexit.

    The powers-that-be — from the business elites to more than 70 per cent of MPs to virtually the entire academy and cultural sphere — were pro-Remain. And they used their influence in the worlds of commentary, letters and culture to paint a picture of Brexit as disastrous. As toxic. As fascistic. Or, at best, as very, very difficult to enact. The disjoint between public enthusiasm for Brexit and elite disgust with it was, at times, staggering.

    As a consequence, it became incredibly difficult to draw out the historic significance, the magnificence, of Brexit.
    …
    Let’s now celebrate the meaningfulness of Brexit. It really cannot be overstated. Brexit is one of the finest acts of democracy in the history of this nation. It ought to take its place in the history books alongside the Levellers’ demand for universal male suffrage in the 1640s, and the mass march for democracy in St Peter’s Field in Manchester in 1819, and the Chartists’ agitation for the right of working-class men to vote in the 1840s, and the civil disobedience of the Suffragettes in the 1910s…

    Because Brexit, and, more importantly, the post-referendum battle to protect Brexit from the anti-democratic elites, shares something incredibly important in common with those democratic leaps forward in British history. Which is that it embodies the patient but determined assertion of ordinary people that they have as much right as the rich and the well-educated to determine the political fate of the nation.
    …
    That so many ‘Red Wall’ Labour strongholds fell to the Tories was the clearest sign that the people still wanted Brexit and that the working classes had finally broken from the Labour bureaucracy and asserted their political and moral independence. The December election was the first time in the history of the European Union that a people refused to allow their vote against the EU to be overthrown or stitched up, as tragically happened in Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Greece and elsewhere. Across Europe, under extraordinary pressure from Brussels, Eurosceptic votes have either been ignored or overridden. Not this time.
    …
    People fought and died for the right to have a real, impactful say in political life. And Brexiteers have done those people proud. I’m celebrating that.

    Brendan O’Neill

  32. The author, who supported Remaining, dumps a little guilt on May and hardest-line Leavers, but most of his opprobrium is delivered where deserved

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/you-can-thank-remainers-for-the-hardness-of-this-brexit/

    I voted Remain. I believed that despite its flaws (and I know them well: I covered more than 50 EU summits as a reporter, and projects including birth of the euro, the stability and growth pact and the European Constitution) Britain’s long-term interests lay in accepting the trade-offs entailed by membership of the EU. I still think it would probably (not certainly) have been better to have stayed in. But we could not do so, because we voted to leave. That vote means we have to leave.
    …
    But this is not the whole story, not by a long way. There are many ways to skin a cat, and more ways for an advanced economy to alter its relationship with its international partners. We had to leave, but there was nothing inevitable about the manner of our exit.

    And while I am content with the fact of our departure from the EU, I cannot celebrate the form of it. We’re getting a much harder Brexit than we could and should have had. We will be poorer for it, at least in the sense that our economy will not grow as fast as it would have done in other scenarios that still ended our membership.
    …
    Time and again the Remain purists attacked any attempt at Brexit compromise that accepted the ineluctable fact that we had to leave because we voted to leave. The Common Market 2.0 proposed by Nick Boles wasn’t perfect (there is no such thing) but it should have been given a fair hearing. It might have produced a Brexit that better reflected a 52:48 vote than the one we’ve got – or than the No Brexit outcome the PV camp wanted. But the Boles plan was strangled by people who should have been backing it. Without the support of enough Remainers, it could not hope to gain traction with Leavers. Remainers who said they feared the impact of Brexit helped kill an attempt to limit the impact of Brexit.

    It wasn’t just by the demolition of compromise options that the FBPE mob gave us a harder Brexit. It was a consequence of strategy too. By challenging the legitimacy of the first vote, by questioning the rationality of the electorate and the integrity of the referendum process, they made it necessary and probably inevitable that the issue would have to be put back to the people for a clarifying vote.

    They didn’t get their second referendum. They got the 2019 election instead, but the outcome was the same as the one they’d have got in a ‘People’s Vote’: the resounding rejection by the electorate for anything that didn’t abide by the instruction given in June 2016.

    The People’s Vote campaign was always a fool’s errand. The same forces that won in 2016 and gave Johnson his majority last month would have smashed Remain in any second referendum. By forcing a decision where those forces could be marshalled and deployed again, the Stop Brexit campaigners gave Britain a harsher form of Brexit than we might have had.

    Some of the revokers and remainers and people’s voters will be noisily weeping tonight, lamenting what is about to be lost. Instead, they should be apologising, for this is their Brexit too.

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