Farage: Brexit Failed Due To Overregulation, Mass Migration, Useless Politicians

Former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage declared during an appearance on the BBC that “Brexit has failed” because of government mismanagement — especially by bureaucrats and Conservative Party politicians.

During the BBC’s Newsnight show on Monday, Farage detailed his reasons for believing that Brexit — the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union (EU) — had failed.

The BBC host questioned Farage about the fallout from Brexit, claiming that “economically, the U.K. would have been better staying in” the European Union — and asked Farage if he agreed.

“I don’t think that for a moment,” he responded. “But what I do think… is we haven’t actually benefited from Brexit economically when we could have done.”

“What Brexit has proved, I’m afraid, is that our politicians are about as useless as the commissioners in Brussels,” Farage added. “We’ve mismanaged this totally.”

He went on to discuss bad policies instituted by the U.K. government, noting that “we are driving business away from our country.”

“We have mismanaged this totally and if you look at simple things, simple things such as takeovers, such as corporation tax, we are driving business away from our country,” Farage said, adding that while the U.K. is “arguably” back in control of their own country, they are currently regulating their own businesses “even more than they were as EU members.”

“Brexit has failed —” he began to add, before being interrupted by the BBC news anchor, who asked him if he was planning a political comeback.

“Well, I wouldn’t rule it out,” Farage replied. “It is not at the top of my bucket list, but frankly we have not delivered on borders, we have not delivered on Brexit. The Tories have let us down very, very badly.”

Despite Farage’s clear explanation for his comments about the failure of Brexit, many mainstream media outlets were quick to cut his statement out of context and use them to suggest that the champion of Brexit was now turning on his own movement.

BBC themselves even posted the clip of the interview with a misleading headline, writing in their tweet: “GB News presenter Nigel Farage admits after he is read a list of negative facts about the UK economy.”

Farage shared another clip from the interview on Twitter, where he discussed the UK’s border crisis and noted that immigration was a main reason that people voted to leave the EU.

“What about the social cost of this? What about the political cost of this? Be in no doubt, the only reason we won the referendum for the leave side was because people believed getting control of our borders would mean the numbers would be lower. That was implicit,” he said in the clip, adding: “This is a breach of trust.”