You can hate him, love him, criticize him, despise him, call him an opportunistic xenophobe and a relentless shark as soon as he smells the blood of his opponents. But you will never get rid of him. “Because I’m clairvoyant,” he jokes – or not, when the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica”, which, like WELT, is part of the Leading European Newspaper Alliance, meets him after a meeting. He is drinking a glass of red Cabernet at one o’clock on an empty stomach. A small thing for someone who miraculously survived a plane crash in 2010 and then testicular cancer.
Nigel Farage is making a comeback, once again. After achieving the long-awaited Brexit, he has now, at the age of 60, made another spectacular breakthrough in British politics: as party leader of Reform UK, a right-wing party that is promising a tough fight against immigration and taxes on companies that employ foreigners. He will be running for the Clacton-on-Sea constituency in Essex. He has already failed to enter the Westminster Parliament seven times. But this time he wants to make it.
WELT: Ultimately, you, Nigel Farage, are doing the left a favour, is that clear to you?
Nigel Farage: No, that’s not true. The election is basically over: Starmer will win. But I will not help the Tories under any circumstances: we are Reform UK, the real opposition in Westminster, while the Tories, who disagree on everything, will be humiliated in this election. And they deserve it. They are traitors who committed suicide.
WELT: In what way?
Farage: In 2019, we played a major role in getting rid of Theresa May. And although we won the European elections by almost 33 percent and became the strongest party in Strasbourg, we made way for Boris Johnson in the general election so he could win and get Brexit done. But look at what they have done: the country is literally in ruins, Brexit has not really been done and around 4.3 million people have immigrated to the UK since 2010. The Tories betrayed the country, period. But then they decided to commit suicide in 2010, with David Cameron as Prime Minister: since then, the Tories have become social democrats, cut the defence budget and promoted mass immigration, the cult of the EU and zero environmental emissions. So it serves them right.
WELT: Did they also betray you during Brexit?
Farage: Definitely. Brexit has actually given us enormous power over rules, laws and immigration, but the Tories have not delivered any of that. Not a bit.
WELT: Is it really as if Brexit never happened?
Farage: Nothing has been put into practice. Otherwise we would not have had another 2.4 million new immigrants in the last two years. And now even more so, with Starmer in power, who will move closer to the EU again.
WELT: So Brexit was a flop?
Farage: Absolutely not. It just needs to be implemented properly. Leaving the EU and the constitutional changes following the 2016 referendum are massive and undeniable facts. But above all, Brexit in 2016, together with Trump’s victory, was the beginning of a broad populist front around the world.
WELT: You are a close friend of former US President Donald Trump. Will he move into the White House again despite the scandals and the recent conviction in the case of porn star Stormy Daniels?
Farage: An absolutely shocking verdict.
WELT: But Trump was unanimously found guilty by a jury of citizens.
Farage: The politicization of the American justice system is now omnipresent, even in trials with jurors. 98 percent of trials in the USA end with the defendant pleading guilty because the court costs are simply too high. The whole system is corrupt.
WELT: But this affair will cost Trump a lot of votes, won’t it?
Farage: I don’t think so. It could end up like Berlusconi. In any case, I will do everything I can to make sure he wins the election, because with him and without Biden, America will be bigger again and the world will be a little safer.
WELT: How can you be so convinced of that?
Farage: Look at Donald Trump’s foreign policy record: no war during his presidency, the outstanding Abraham Accords in the Middle East, and if it weren’t for such a weak President in the White House who ordered that humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, I don’t think Putin would have attacked Ukraine.
Welt: Do you really believe that Trump will be able to end the war in Ukraine “in 24 hours,” as he keeps claiming?
Farage: He might fail on Ukraine, I admit that. But at least he will try. That is Donald Trump’s modus operandi: big promises and then he always finds a solution. He deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, but I think the elites will never give it to him. The West believes that if we give Ukraine as many weapons as possible, it will win. But Russia will never give up. There is a risk of an endless war like the one in Isonzo.
WELT: As a Briton, aren’t you afraid that Trump could endanger Europe’s security with his hate speech against NATO?
Farage: Anyone who thinks that is a fool, a moron and an idiot! You have never really understood Trump. In fact, his statements on NATO are making the Atlantic alliance stronger and stronger. Donald said to me: “If all countries pay their dues, I will support NATO 100 percent.”
WELT: Speaking of Europe, the elections for the EU Parliament took place recently. Don’t you miss Strasbourg after so many years?
Farage: No. But I am glad that the right-wing Eurosceptic movement is still strong. The anti-democratic EU will definitely capitulate, 100 percent, and soon. I can predict it, like Brexit, the immigration crisis, and I have also said at quite innocent times that Russia would invade Ukraine.
WELT: But how can you be sure that the EU will collapse? Now, after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, it seems more united than ever?
Farage: Oh, come on! Look at Germany’s position on Ukraine compared to the others. Berlin and Paris are further apart than they used to be. And what about Orbán, who supports Putin while the Poles hate the Russians? All of this is unsustainable in the long term.
WELT: And what do you think of the other right-wing champion, Giorgia Meloni?
Farage: I was surprised by her positive attitude towards NATO and Ukraine. Meloni is Italy’s “Iron Lady” and will make the country even more conservative.
This interview first appeared in WELT’s partner publication “La Repubblica”. Translated from Italian by Bettina Schneider.
