Get Ready For Five More Years of Nigel Farage
It looks like the EU will give a dysfunctional U.K. the time it needs to sort out Brexit – even if that means weakening its own institutions in the process.
Europe has been remarkably unified during Brexit. That may all be about to change.
Photographer: Matt Cardy/Getty Images EuropeNigel Farage, the flamboyant Brexiteer and friend of Donald Trump, has for years used his seat in the European Parliament to merrily trash the EU and its institutions. He’s desperate to lose his job. “You don’t want me coming back here,” he told fellow MEPs this week, as he called on Brussels to block any future British request to delay Brexit beyond the March 29th deadline.
He makes a valid point. The longer the delay, the more likely it is that the U.K. will take part in European elections in May – meaning Farage will end up campaigning for another five-year term as the face of British anti-EU sentiment. Farage’s arch-nemesis Guy Verhofstadt, a federalist lawmaker, concurred: “I don’t want a long extension.”