EU FAILURE: How John Redwood claimed ‘joining the EU led to a big DECLINE in UK industry’
BRITAIN’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) - the precursor to the EU - in the Seventies led to a big decline in UK industry as the single market did the exact opposite of helping the country grow, Conservative MP John Redwood claimed in a throwback report. As Brexit uncertainty looms, a report by Brexiteer MP John Redwood resurfaced, in which he argues how detrimental the bloc has been for UK industry.
In a 2016 post for his blog, Mr Redwood claimed that when Britain joined the EEC in 1973, “more barriers to trade had been pulled down in manufacturing than in services”. He wrote: "EU rules were often such that UK industry was badly damaged by the shock of joining and the continued shock of staying in as the rules increased and tightened."
Listing the damages suffered since Britain's entry into the bloc, Mr Redwood said: "When the UK joined the EU we had a 45 million tonnes a year steel industry. Today we are battling to save an 11 million tonnes industry.
"When we joined the EU we had a 400,000 tonnes a year aluminium industry. Today we have just 43,000 tonnes of capacity left.
"When we joined the EU we had 20 million tonnes of cement capacity. Today we have 12 million tonnes.
"Just before we joined the EEC in 1971 we had a 1 million tonnes a year fishing industry. Today we have 600,000 tonnes.
"The October 2013 government ‘Future of Manufacturing’ Report shows that between 1951 and 1973 metals output rose 3 percent a year. Since joining the EEC/EU it has declined by more than 6 percent.
"Between 1951 and 1973 food and drink output rose by 5.6 percent per year. Since joining the EEC/EU it has fallen by 1 percent a year.
"Between 1951 and 1973 textiles output expanded at 2.6 percent a year. Since joining the EEC/EU it has fallen by more than 6 percent a year."
Mr Redwood noted that while it may not be fair to blame all this decline on membership of the EU, as there are other factors, "it nonetheless shows categorically that joining the EU and helping create the so called single market has not helped us grow and has not saved many of our industries from decline".
Brexit Party to launch a 'northern attack' on Labour heartlands says Nigel Farage after Tom Watson backed calls for a second referendum Nigel Farage said yesterday that he is planning a ‘northern attack’ on Labour-voting Leave areas.
It came as Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, called for his party to back a second Brexit referendum.
Mr Farage, leader of the new Brexit Party, which last week surged to a shock lead in the polls, said he would be targeting ‘Labour lies and dishonesty’ in the run-up to the European Parliament elections on May 23. He said any notion of a second referendum would be a ‘total insult’ to the five million Labour supporters who voted Leave.
But Mr Watson insisted Labour backing for a second – or ‘confirmatory’ – referendum was the only way to respond to the challenge posed by Mr Farage.
His comments appear aimed at putting pressure on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to make a second vote a red line issue in Brexit talks with Theresa May
Mr Farage told The Sunday Times: ‘My real challenge here is not the Conservatives. It’s that there are about five million people who voted Corbyn in 2017 and voted Brexit the year before, and I think that’s where I need to be.
‘My priority as leader is to go into the Labour heartlands. It’s my intention to go round south Wales, the Midlands, the North, and absolutely lay it out there, the extent to which they are being sold out [on Brexit] by Labour. I now intend to wholeheartedly target Labour lies and dishonesty in the weeks ahead.’
Responding to the challenge posed by Mr Farage and his Brexit Party, Mr Corbyn told the Sunday Mirror that Labour was not ‘worried about him’, dismissing his platform as ‘simple populism’.
Why I’m standing for the Brexit Party By Alka Sehgal Cuthbert
The establishment parties have abandoned democratic politics.
I am standing as a candidate for the Brexit Party in the upcoming European elections. I can see how it might be a bit of a surprise to my friends and family. I’m Indian, I have a doctorate from Cambridge, I’ve lived in Barcelona, and I like to travel. Surely I’d be more at home in the supposedly progressive EU?
But the EU is not the institution some make it out to be. While I love European culture, I do not feel at home as a member of the EU.
The EU is not a haven of social justice – it is a thoroughly racist institution. In order to maintain EU free movement, it has to ensure its borders are kept tightly sealed against non-EU people – as Belgian MEP Guy Verhofstadt gleefully tweeted recently. Furthermore, the EU has seen fit to send large amounts of money to governments in Libya and elsewhere to keep people away from Europe by any brutal means necessary.
That poster, or anything else Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage may have said, pales into insignificance compared with the egregious racism of the EU. (And that is not even counting the deleterious effects of the Common Agricultural Policy on agricultural development in Africa.)
Another reason I’m standing as a candidate for the Brexit Party is that, unlike the other mainstream parties, it openly affirms the importance of democracy – the most important aspect of which is the majority vote. Without this, anyone without access to the levers of political or cultural power remains more vulnerable to the whims of the ruling political class.
In the past, the Labour Party, and the political left in general, aspired to represent the interests, beliefs and ideas of the majority of citizens: the working class. This representative function was an important part of social-democratic governance in Britain in the postwar era. It helped form the basis for a social contract between competing interests in society.
Political representation via parties was the means by which the political ruling class could win the consent of a majority of its citizens for its policy decisions, and the citizens could hold their leaders accountable. This political order was expressed through public institutions that afforded varying levels of professional trust, autonomy and human judgement. These ethical values inflected the norms of everyday social life. This is what has been undermined by our membership of the European Union. Everyday life in the social-democratic era may not have been great for everyone all the time, but nor was it a sea of racism just waiting for ethical purification via the EU, as some Remainers would have us believe. When my parents were looking for their first house in a London suburb in the early 1960s, the owners were told by the neighbours not to ‘sell the house to the Pakis’. Being Welsh, with their own anti-English predilection, the owners did exactly that (except that my parents are Indian, not Pakistani). A year later, the same neighbours were telling my mother to hand over her dirty washing so they could wash it in their washing machine for her.
My mother had just had my younger brother, and we couldn’t afford a washing machine. A neighbour had spotted my mother hanging out nappies shortly after giving birth, and asked her why she wasn’t resting. They offered to wash the dirty nappies. They never became best friends, but they didn’t need to. They tolerated each other as fellow humans and lived peaceably for decades after.
People like those neighbours, as well as industrial workers in other parts of the UK, are the people who the Labour Party and the left have abandoned. After it lost their support during the 1980s, when the Thatcher government effectively tore up the established social contract, Labour and the left decided the working class was a lost cause. They became increasingly focused on the middle class and began to see ordinary people as a cultural and political problem in need of increasing regulation by enlightened leaders, either in Westminster or Brussels.The delegitimisation of the working class led to the delegitimisation of democracy. Politicians began to draw their authority not from citizens, but from their European peers. And as nation states have turned themselves into member states, supra-national legislative systems and policies have bypassed established national democratic processes.
While governance definitely needs expertise and specialised knowledge, politics per se doesn’t. What it needs is an ethical idealism to underpin political realism. Our established political parties are bereft of both, and stand painfully exposed. That is why I am standing as a candidate for the Brexit Party – a party which has the unique aim of making itself redundant. It has a certain dialectical as well as democratic appeal.
Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert is a candidate for the Brexit Party in the European Parliament elections. She is an educator, researcher and writer. She is also co-editor of What Should Schools Teach? Disciplines, Subjects and the Pursuit of Truth.
The Brexit Party is holding a rally in Clacton with Nigel Farage and other speakers to be announced. Join the Brexiteer fightback! About this Event Join us outside Clacton Pier on the Pier Gap road at 12:30pm on Wednesday 24th April. Nigel Farage and other Brexit Party representatives will speak. It's not one to miss!
When voting for a political party, one should consider what policies they have. We all know the policies of the major parties to a certain degree (whether they carry out promises is another matter) Whilst I agree the political system in this country is seriously flawed, it would make sense to have some knowledge of the party who are saying they are going to change things.
@brexitparty_uk Follow Follow @brexitparty_uk More .@jaglancy, veteran and broadcaster is standing for The Brexit Party in the upcoming European elections because he believes in Britain.
I thought Nigel was anti all things not British? Maybe he is unaware St George wasn’t English 😊 Maybe part of their manifesto is he will make a new Saint when he gets in power.
Q: Having been to a private school, and having a background in banking, what do you have in common with ordinary people?
Farage says he never worked in banking. Next question.
(Farage was a commodities trader in the City, not a banker.)
When pressed, Farage says he did not choose his parents, who sent him to a private school. He did not choose the name Nigel, he says.
He says he cares about democracy. That is something many people care about.
Farage says Brexit party victory at European elections would reduce chance of second referendum Q: In the past you said you would not mind a second referendum because you thought leave would win. Is that still your view?
Farage says what he said was that leave voters had to get read for a second referendum.
But do they want that referendum? No. They want the first one enacted.
He says the better the Brexit party does in the European elections, the less chance there will be of a second referendum.
Farage says the better the Brexit party does in the European elections, the less chance there will be of a second referendum
Q: You talk about targeting Labour heartlands. How do you think you will be received there? And, if you try to become an MP again, will you stand in a Labour seat?
On the issue of standing as an MP, Farage says he is focused on this election.
As for Labour heartlands, he says it is a mistake to think Euroscepticism is centred on the right.
He says Labour has its roots in democracy. And for that party to be telling Labour leave voters they got it wrong is a mistake. Claire Fox says Labour leave voters voted Labour in 2017 because they thought the party would deliver Brexit. But the party is now “sneering” at them. It deserves a “rhetorical **** nose” for treating them with such contempt.
She says she would have more respect for Labour if it chose a firm position - either remain or leave. But they have not got the courage to do that, she says.
Q: Isn’t it the case that the best way to get the Brexit you want is to have a change of Tory leader? Voting Brexit party in the European elections won’t make much difference. Shouldn’t you focus on changing Tory leader?
Farage says, in previous European election campaigns, he was told those elections would not change a thing. But he thinks he proved that argument wrong.
As for the Conservative party, he says it is a leave party in the country.
But it is up to the Conservative party to decide their future.
He says he has not seen a Tory leadership candidate who has not signed up to the withdrawal agreement.
He says the two-party system is bust. The Brexit party is the catalyst for real change.
When voting for a political party, one should consider what policies they have. We all know the policies of the major parties to a certain degree (whether they carry out promises is another matter) Whilst I agree the political system in this country is seriously flawed, it would make sense to have some knowledge of the party who are saying they are going to change things.
So... rather than sound bites and slogans....
What are the policies of the Brexit Party?
Farage says Brexit party not planning to discuss policy in detail until after European elections. @tomgoodun As you are a remainer , and the clue is in the description, eurosceptic party, whatever the policies are , won't be of any interest to you . Thanks for calling .
Q: Are you in talks with any senior Tories about defecting? And are you going to publish a manifesto? What does Brexit mean to you?
Farage says everyone at Westminster is interested in defectors. But he is more interested in people from “broad walks of life” representing the party.
He says he thinks his party will put forward a list of 70 candidates with more experience and more honesty than candidates for other parties.
As for a manifesto, he says his party is campaigning on trust and on competence. It is clear that Theresa May and the people around her have never done a deal in their lives.
Of course they will talk about change, he says. He says the two-party system is not fit for purpose. They will talk about things like how the UK is not training enough doctors. But they will do that after the elections on 23 May.
Farage says Brexit party going for Labour vote 'in very big way' Speaking at the start of the Brexit party news conference, Nigel Farage said he would be going after the Labour vote in the European elections “in a very big way”. He said:
There are five million people that voted for Jeremy Corbyn and voted for Brexit as well and that’s going to be our task.
I think we will go on squeezing the Conservatives and squeezing Ukip down to virtually nothing.
We’re going to go after that Labour vote in a very big way.
Here are the final three candidates unveiled by the party today.
Businessman and owner of H.Forman and Son @LanceForman is now standing as a candidate for The Brexit Party.
We need people with real life experience taking leadership, not this current useless political class. Forman used to be a special adviser to Peter Lilley when he was trade secretary in the 1990s.
I thought Nigel was anti all things not British? Maybe he is unaware St George wasn’t English 😊 Maybe part of their manifesto is he will make a new Saint when he gets in power.
Thinking isn't really your strong point is it . ( rhetorical )
Q: Having been to a private school, and having a background in banking, what do you have in common with ordinary people?
Farage says he never worked in banking. Next question.
(Farage was a commodities trader in the City, not a banker.)
When pressed, Farage says he did not choose his parents, who sent him to a private school. He did not choose the name Nigel, he says.
He says he cares about democracy. That is something many people care about.
Farage says Brexit party victory at European elections would reduce chance of second referendum Q: In the past you said you would not mind a second referendum because you thought leave would win. Is that still your view?
Farage says what he said was that leave voters had to get read for a second referendum.
But do they want that referendum? No. They want the first one enacted.
He says the better the Brexit party does in the European elections, the less chance there will be of a second referendum.
Farage says the better the Brexit party does in the European elections, the less chance there will be of a second referendum
Q: You talk about targeting Labour heartlands. How do you think you will be received there? And, if you try to become an MP again, will you stand in a Labour seat?
On the issue of standing as an MP, Farage says he is focused on this election.
As for Labour heartlands, he says it is a mistake to think Euroscepticism is centred on the right.
He says Labour has its roots in democracy. And for that party to be telling Labour leave voters they got it wrong is a mistake. Claire Fox says Labour leave voters voted Labour in 2017 because they thought the party would deliver Brexit. But the party is now “sneering” at them. It deserves a “rhetorical **** nose” for treating them with such contempt.
She says she would have more respect for Labour if it chose a firm position - either remain or leave. But they have not got the courage to do that, she says.
Q: Isn’t it the case that the best way to get the Brexit you want is to have a change of Tory leader? Voting Brexit party in the European elections won’t make much difference. Shouldn’t you focus on changing Tory leader?
Farage says, in previous European election campaigns, he was told those elections would not change a thing. But he thinks he proved that argument wrong.
As for the Conservative party, he says it is a leave party in the country.
But it is up to the Conservative party to decide their future.
He says he has not seen a Tory leadership candidate who has not signed up to the withdrawal agreement.
He says the two-party system is bust. The Brexit party is the catalyst for real change.
Comments
BRITAIN’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) - the precursor to the EU - in the Seventies led to a big decline in UK industry as the single market did the exact opposite of helping the country grow, Conservative MP John Redwood claimed in a throwback report.
As Brexit uncertainty looms, a report by Brexiteer MP John Redwood resurfaced, in which he argues how detrimental the bloc has been for UK industry.
In a 2016 post for his blog, Mr Redwood claimed that when Britain joined the EEC in 1973, “more barriers to trade had been pulled down in manufacturing than in services”.
He wrote: "EU rules were often such that UK industry was badly damaged by the shock of joining and the continued shock of staying in as the rules increased and tightened."
Listing the damages suffered since Britain's entry into the bloc, Mr Redwood said: "When the UK joined the EU we had a 45 million tonnes a year steel industry. Today we are battling to save an 11 million tonnes industry.
"When we joined the EU we had a 400,000 tonnes a year aluminium industry. Today we have just 43,000 tonnes of capacity left.
"When we joined the EU we had 20 million tonnes of cement capacity. Today we have 12 million tonnes.
"Just before we joined the EEC in 1971 we had a 1 million tonnes a year fishing industry. Today we have 600,000 tonnes.
"The October 2013 government ‘Future of Manufacturing’ Report shows that between 1951 and 1973 metals output rose 3 percent a year. Since joining the EEC/EU it has declined by more than 6 percent.
"Between 1951 and 1973 food and drink output rose by 5.6 percent per year. Since joining the EEC/EU it has fallen by 1 percent a year.
"Between 1951 and 1973 textiles output expanded at 2.6 percent a year. Since joining the EEC/EU it has fallen by more than 6 percent a year."
Mr Redwood noted that while it may not be fair to blame all this decline on membership of the EU, as there are other factors, "it nonetheless shows categorically that joining the EU and helping create the so called single market has not helped us grow and has not saved many of our industries from decline".
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1116724/brexit-news-eu-theresa-may-conservative-party-john-redwood-single-market-spt?utm_source=traffic.outbrain&utm_medium=traffic.outbrain&utm_term=traffic.outbrain&utm_content=traffic.outbrain&utm_campaign=traffic.outbrain
Nigel Farage said yesterday that he is planning a ‘northern attack’ on Labour-voting Leave areas.
It came as Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, called for his party to back a second Brexit referendum.
Mr Farage, leader of the new Brexit Party, which last week surged to a shock lead in the polls, said he would be targeting ‘Labour lies and dishonesty’ in the run-up to the European Parliament elections on May 23.
He said any notion of a second referendum would be a ‘total insult’ to the five million Labour supporters who voted Leave.
But Mr Watson insisted Labour backing for a second – or ‘confirmatory’ – referendum was the only way to respond to the challenge posed by Mr Farage.
His comments appear aimed at putting pressure on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to make a second vote a red line issue in Brexit talks with Theresa May
Mr Farage told The Sunday Times: ‘My real challenge here is not the Conservatives. It’s that there are about five million people who voted Corbyn in 2017 and voted Brexit the year before, and I think that’s where I need to be.
‘My priority as leader is to go into the Labour heartlands. It’s my intention to go round south Wales, the Midlands, the North, and absolutely lay it out there, the extent to which they are being sold out [on Brexit] by Labour. I now intend to wholeheartedly target Labour lies and dishonesty in the weeks ahead.’
Responding to the challenge posed by Mr Farage and his Brexit Party, Mr Corbyn told the Sunday Mirror that Labour was not ‘worried about him’, dismissing his platform as ‘simple populism’.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6945761/Brexit-Party-launch-northern-attack-Labour-heartlands-says-Nigel-Farage.html
By Alka Sehgal Cuthbert
The establishment parties have abandoned democratic politics.
I am standing as a candidate for the Brexit Party in the upcoming European elections. I can see how it might be a bit of a surprise to my friends and family. I’m Indian, I have a doctorate from Cambridge, I’ve lived in Barcelona, and I like to travel. Surely I’d be more at home in the supposedly progressive EU?
But the EU is not the institution some make it out to be. While I love European culture, I do not feel at home as a member of the EU.
The EU is not a haven of social justice – it is a thoroughly racist institution. In order to maintain EU free movement, it has to ensure its borders are kept tightly sealed against non-EU people – as Belgian MEP Guy Verhofstadt gleefully tweeted recently. Furthermore, the EU has seen fit to send large amounts of money to governments in Libya and elsewhere to keep people away from Europe by any brutal means necessary.
That poster, or anything else Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage may have said, pales into insignificance compared with the egregious racism of the EU. (And that is not even counting the deleterious effects of the Common Agricultural Policy on agricultural development in Africa.)
Another reason I’m standing as a candidate for the Brexit Party is that, unlike the other mainstream parties, it openly affirms the importance of democracy – the most important aspect of which is the majority vote. Without this, anyone without access to the levers of political or cultural power remains more vulnerable to the whims of the ruling political class.
In the past, the Labour Party, and the political left in general, aspired to represent the interests, beliefs and ideas of the majority of citizens: the working class. This representative function was an important part of social-democratic governance in Britain in the postwar era. It helped form the basis for a social contract between competing interests in society.
Political representation via parties was the means by which the political ruling class could win the consent of a majority of its citizens for its policy decisions, and the citizens could hold their leaders accountable. This political order was expressed through public institutions that afforded varying levels of professional trust, autonomy and human judgement. These ethical values inflected the norms of everyday social life.
This is what has been undermined by our membership of the European Union. Everyday life in the social-democratic era may not have been great for everyone all the time, but nor was it a sea of racism just waiting for ethical purification via the EU, as some Remainers would have us believe.
When my parents were looking for their first house in a London suburb in the early 1960s, the owners were told by the neighbours not to ‘sell the house to the Pakis’. Being Welsh, with their own anti-English predilection, the owners did exactly that (except that my parents are Indian, not Pakistani). A year later, the same neighbours were telling my mother to hand over her dirty washing so they could wash it in their washing machine for her.
My mother had just had my younger brother, and we couldn’t afford a washing machine. A neighbour had spotted my mother hanging out nappies shortly after giving birth, and asked her why she wasn’t resting. They offered to wash the dirty nappies. They never became best friends, but they didn’t need to. They tolerated each other as fellow humans and lived peaceably for decades after.
People like those neighbours, as well as industrial workers in other parts of the UK, are the people who the Labour Party and the left have abandoned. After it lost their support during the 1980s, when the Thatcher government effectively tore up the established social contract, Labour and the left decided the working class was a lost cause. They became increasingly focused on the middle class and began to see ordinary people as a cultural and political problem in need of increasing regulation by enlightened leaders, either in Westminster or Brussels.The delegitimisation of the working class led to the delegitimisation of democracy. Politicians began to draw their authority not from citizens, but from their European peers. And as nation states have turned themselves into member states, supra-national legislative systems and policies have bypassed established national democratic processes.
While governance definitely needs expertise and specialised knowledge, politics per se doesn’t. What it needs is an ethical idealism to underpin political realism. Our established political parties are bereft of both, and stand painfully exposed. That is why I am standing as a candidate for the Brexit Party – a party which has the unique aim of making itself redundant. It has a certain dialectical as well as democratic appeal.
Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert is a candidate for the Brexit Party in the European Parliament elections. She is an educator, researcher and writer. She is also co-editor of What Should Schools Teach? Disciplines, Subjects and the Pursuit of Truth.
The Brexit Party is holding a rally in Clacton with Nigel Farage and other speakers to be announced. Join the Brexiteer fightback!
About this Event
Join us outside Clacton Pier on the Pier Gap road at 12:30pm on Wednesday 24th April. Nigel Farage and other Brexit Party representatives will speak. It's not one to miss!
Date And Time
Wed, 24 April 2019, 12:30 BST
Location
Clacton Pier
No.1 North Sea
Clacton-on-Sea
CO15 1QX
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-brexit-party-clacton-tickets-60662681714
When voting for a political party, one should consider what policies they have.
We all know the policies of the major parties to a certain degree (whether they carry out promises is another matter)
Whilst I agree the political system in this country is seriously flawed, it would make sense to have some knowledge of the party who are saying they are going to change things.
So... rather than sound bites and slogans....
What are the policies of the Brexit Party?
Verified account
@brexitparty_uk
Follow Follow @brexitparty_uk
More
.@jaglancy, veteran and broadcaster is standing for The Brexit Party in the upcoming European elections because he believes in Britain.
Let's change politics for good!
Verified account
@brexitparty_uk
Follow Follow @brexitparty_uk
More
.@Fox_Claire is standing for The Brexit Party as someone from the left.
This isn't about left or right, this is about democracy.
https://www.pscp.tv/w/1OwxWkBEkanxQ
Maybe part of their manifesto is he will make a new Saint when he gets in power.
Q: Having been to a private school, and having a background in banking, what do you have in common with ordinary people?
Farage says he never worked in banking. Next question.
(Farage was a commodities trader in the City, not a banker.)
When pressed, Farage says he did not choose his parents, who sent him to a private school. He did not choose the name Nigel, he says.
He says he cares about democracy. That is something many people care about.
Farage says Brexit party victory at European elections would reduce chance of second referendum
Q: In the past you said you would not mind a second referendum because you thought leave would win. Is that still your view?
Farage says what he said was that leave voters had to get read for a second referendum.
But do they want that referendum? No. They want the first one enacted.
He says the better the Brexit party does in the European elections, the less chance there will be of a second referendum.
Farage says the better the Brexit party does in the European elections, the less chance there will be of a second referendum
Q: You talk about targeting Labour heartlands. How do you think you will be received there? And, if you try to become an MP again, will you stand in a Labour seat?
On the issue of standing as an MP, Farage says he is focused on this election.
As for Labour heartlands, he says it is a mistake to think Euroscepticism is centred on the right.
He says Labour has its roots in democracy. And for that party to be telling Labour leave voters they got it wrong is a mistake.
Claire Fox says Labour leave voters voted Labour in 2017 because they thought the party would deliver Brexit. But the party is now “sneering” at them. It deserves a “rhetorical **** nose” for treating them with such contempt.
She says she would have more respect for Labour if it chose a firm position - either remain or leave. But they have not got the courage to do that, she says.
Q: Isn’t it the case that the best way to get the Brexit you want is to have a change of Tory leader? Voting Brexit party in the European elections won’t make much difference. Shouldn’t you focus on changing Tory leader?
Farage says, in previous European election campaigns, he was told those elections would not change a thing. But he thinks he proved that argument wrong.
As for the Conservative party, he says it is a leave party in the country.
But it is up to the Conservative party to decide their future.
He says he has not seen a Tory leadership candidate who has not signed up to the withdrawal agreement.
He says the two-party system is bust. The Brexit party is the catalyst for real change.
Farage says everyone at Westminster is interested in defectors. But he is more interested in people from “broad walks of life” representing the party.
He says he thinks his party will put forward a list of 70 candidates with more experience and more honesty than candidates for other parties.
As for a manifesto, he says his party is campaigning on trust and on competence. It is clear that Theresa May and the people around her have never done a deal in their lives.
Of course they will talk about change, he says. He says the two-party system is not fit for purpose. They will talk about things like how the UK is not training enough doctors. But they will do that after the elections on 23 May.
Speaking at the start of the Brexit party news conference, Nigel Farage said he would be going after the Labour vote in the European elections “in a very big way”. He said:
There are five million people that voted for Jeremy Corbyn and voted for Brexit as well and that’s going to be our task.
I think we will go on squeezing the Conservatives and squeezing Ukip down to virtually nothing.
We’re going to go after that Labour vote in a very big way.
Here are the final three candidates unveiled by the party today.
Christina came to Britain in 1985, now she wants to stand up for the 17.4 million
We need people with real life experience taking leadership, not this current useless political class.
Forman used to be a special adviser to Peter Lilley when he was trade secretary in the 1990s.
Q: Having been to a private school, and having a background in banking, what do you have in common with ordinary people?
Farage says he never worked in banking. Next question.
(Farage was a commodities trader in the City, not a banker.)
When pressed, Farage says he did not choose his parents, who sent him to a private school. He did not choose the name Nigel, he says.
He says he cares about democracy. That is something many people care about.
Farage says Brexit party victory at European elections would reduce chance of second referendum
Q: In the past you said you would not mind a second referendum because you thought leave would win. Is that still your view?
Farage says what he said was that leave voters had to get read for a second referendum.
But do they want that referendum? No. They want the first one enacted.
He says the better the Brexit party does in the European elections, the less chance there will be of a second referendum.
Farage says the better the Brexit party does in the European elections, the less chance there will be of a second referendum
Q: You talk about targeting Labour heartlands. How do you think you will be received there? And, if you try to become an MP again, will you stand in a Labour seat?
On the issue of standing as an MP, Farage says he is focused on this election.
As for Labour heartlands, he says it is a mistake to think Euroscepticism is centred on the right.
He says Labour has its roots in democracy. And for that party to be telling Labour leave voters they got it wrong is a mistake.
Claire Fox says Labour leave voters voted Labour in 2017 because they thought the party would deliver Brexit. But the party is now “sneering” at them. It deserves a “rhetorical **** nose” for treating them with such contempt.
She says she would have more respect for Labour if it chose a firm position - either remain or leave. But they have not got the courage to do that, she says.
Q: Isn’t it the case that the best way to get the Brexit you want is to have a change of Tory leader? Voting Brexit party in the European elections won’t make much difference. Shouldn’t you focus on changing Tory leader?
Farage says, in previous European election campaigns, he was told those elections would not change a thing. But he thinks he proved that argument wrong.
As for the Conservative party, he says it is a leave party in the country.
But it is up to the Conservative party to decide their future.
He says he has not seen a Tory leadership candidate who has not signed up to the withdrawal agreement.
He says the two-party system is bust. The Brexit party is the catalyst for real change.