Nigel Farage, the man who helped orchestrate the United Kingdom’s pending exit from the European Union, said in a nearly 10-minute interview with CNN’s Richard Quest Tuesday that it’s time to “stop the silliness” and get down to work.
Fresh off the boos and turned backs that greeted his appearance at the European Council earlier in the day, Farage said warnings of economic chaos following the vote won’t come to pass, but suggested even if they do, it would be worth it.
“Freedom, independence, democracy, not being a slave to somebody else is something on which you can’t put a price,” he said. “And what we did last Thursday is we voted to take back our country, to take back our laws, our courts, our borders, our pride and our self-respect.”
Farage, a member of the European parliament since 1999, derided his fellow members who booed him Tuesday when he spoke at the Council meeting in Brussels, the first since U.K. voters approved the exit referendum.
“Now look,” Farage told Quest, laughing. “They were abusing me from the moment I started. Twice the President had to cease proceedings and say, ‘Please listen to Mr. Farage.”
“When I said to them, ‘Can we be grown up about this? Can we talk about trade deals?’ and then they all laughed and giggled,” he said.
“That was when I said, ‘Of course the trouble with you people is none of you have ever had a proper job,’ which wasn’t wrong,” he said.
“They don’t like me,” he said, “It’s mutual.”
Speaking directly to U.S. citizens, Farage asked them to consider the following scenario when evaluating how to feel about the British exit: “Imagine if NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) was a political union. Imagine if a court in Mexico could overrule anything that Congress did. Imagine if you have free movement of people with Mexico. How you you feel?” he asked. “You wouldn’t like it.”
Other points from Farage’s interview with Quest:
— He rejected the argument that political chaos with the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron and the no-confidence vote for the Labour Party leader are sending a bad message to the world about the U.K.’s stability. “It’s a great message,” he said. “Our political powers have let us down like a cheap pair of braces (suspenders), and what we said last week with that referendum is, ‘Get thee gone.'”
— Farage believes it would be best to formally trigger the exit process in the next few weeks to avoid unnecessary uncertainty. “Let’s crack on,” he said. Cameron has proposed leaving that task to his successor, who is not expected to be in place before fall.
— The next prime minister should be someone who upholds the referendum, but otherwise, Farage said he doesn’t care who it is.
— He didn’t directly answer a question about the “Leave” campaign’s apparent promise that some £350 million ($466 million) in savings from leaving the EU would be invested into the country’s National Health Service. Farage previously said he regretted the promise made by organizers, but said the reason he didn’t speak up against it during the vote is that he is “too soft, too kind and too easy.”
— He also addressed the U.S. presidential election, saying Donald Trump would be better for the United Kingdom than President Barack Obama has been, and praising the presumptive Republican nominee for talking about things “other people try to brush under the carpet.” And as for the presumptive Democratic nominee? “There’s nothing on Earth that would ever persuade me to vote for Hillary Clinton,” he said.
