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  You aren’t laughing at me now, UK’s Farage tells jeering MEPs

You aren’t laughing at me now, UK’s Farage tells jeering MEPs

AFP
Published : Jun 29, 2016, 1:53 am IST
Updated : Jun 29, 2016, 1:53 am IST

Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-EU UK Independ-ence Party, on Tuesday told a jeering European Parliament he had had the last laugh after Britain defied their warnings and voted to quit the EU.

Here and Now
 Here and Now

Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-EU UK Independ-ence Party, on Tuesday told a jeering European Parliament he had had the last laugh after Britain defied their warnings and voted to quit the EU.

“Isn’t it funny. When I came here 17 years ago and I said I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the EU, you all laughed at me but you are not laughing now,” Mr Farage told MEPs.

Mr Farage said the European Union was “in denial” about its failing and wrong-headed ambitions for a united Europe from which voters were turning away in droves.

“You have imposed on them a political union and when the people in 2005 in the Netherlands and in France voted against you, you simply ignored them and brought the Lisbon Treaty in by the back door!” he told MEPs in an emergency debate on Britain’s Brexit vote. Going into the chamber, a beaming Mr Farage embraced European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, his long-time sparring partner who in his own address asked why the UKIP leader had even bothered to turn up.

But Mr Farage would not be denied his moment, saying Thursday’s vote was “seismic” with far-reaching implications beyond Britain’s immediate future.

“The little people rejected the multinational companies, the banks, the big politicians and they said: ‘we want our country back’,” Mr Farage said. “The UK will not be the last member state to leave the EU!”