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Nigel Farage reveals the moment he vowed to fight against the EU
29 January 2020, 16:06
Nigel Farage told LBC the exact moment he became an opponent of the European Union.
The Brexit Party leader is in his fourth decade in the European Parliament, but made his final speech today before packing up his office in Brussels.
Ahead of the the day the UK finally gets Brexit done on Friday, Nigel told the story of the moment he realised the fanaticism of the people running Europe.
Speaking to LBC, he said: "A European constitution was drafted and the French had a referendum on this.
"I took part in the French referendum - in fact I used a very large chunk of European Parliament money from their information budget, which they designed for MEPs to sell how good the EU is. Well, I used it in France and later in Ireland to send lots of literature to households.
"I was in Paris that night and the French voted no to the constitution.
"A few days later, I was in Brussels and the Dutch had a referendum. They overwhelmingly voted against the European constitution.
"We were in the Press Bar having the most enormous party and I genuinely felt at that moment that we had stopped European centralisation.
"Then walking past the bar was a German socialist MEP, who was one of the people who drafted the European constitution. I jokingly asked if he would join us for a glass of champagne to celebrate this outbreak of democracy.
"And he looked at me and said 'You may have your little party, you may think this is a victory, but we have 50 different ways to win.'
"The colour drained from me and I realised how fanatical these people were.
"Within a few weeks, they'd rebranded the constitution as the Lisbon Treaty. They boasted that the beauty of it is, as it was a treaty and not a constitution, it didn't need to be put to referendums. They didn't surrender a single power.
"That for me was the moment that I went from being not just a believer that the UK was a square peg in a round hole and that we should leave, but that was the moment I became an outright opponent of the whole European Union.
"I realised this place had the most enormous power and it wasn't prepared to surrender it."
