By Nicholas Ballasy
Nigel Farage, former leader of the UK Independence Party, said President Trump is “a true conservative hero” with an agenda that conservative Republicans should rally around.
“Worst of all, the biggest enemy that we face, those of us that have fought for conservative values and goodness, me, I spent 25 years fighting for Brexit, but perhaps the biggest enemy of all that we face are those that are within our ranks, those that masquerade as conservatives but actually follow liberal agendas,” Farage said during the Young America’s Foundation National Conservative Student Conference on Friday.
“Now I say that in light of the remarkable events of 2016. You know, we all lived through it. We were all a part of it but actually in 100 years’ time, in 200 years’ time, when history is being taught, 2016 will be seen to be the pivotal year, the year that good, ordinary, decent people took back control of their lives from career politicians who have taken us in the wrong direction,” he added.
Farage described his impression of Trump after he last met with him, saying that Trump is determined to carry out the agenda that he laid out during the campaign.
“What really struck me was his absolute determination to carry out as much as he possibly could of the program upon which he was elected, and to do that come hell or high water. Donald Trump has restored my faith in national democracy and in leaders who make promises to people they try to keep, and I put it to you that Donald Trump actually is a true conservative hero, he really is, in many of the things he’s trying to do,” he said.
“And yet, who are the people really giving Trump a problem? Who are the people really trying to stop the agenda that won that election from succeeding? Well, it isn’t the Democrats. It isn’t CNN. It’s John McCain and it’s people in his own party, and I think as the midterm elections hove into view it is incumbent upon all people who are conservatives to get behind this president, to help him fix this agenda. He’s having a tough time and we, too, on the other side of the pond are having a tough time,” he added. The UKIP saw a dramatic slide in support in the June general election in which the Labour Party gained 30 seats in Parliament.
Farage said a “number of people” in British Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet are “doing all they can to water down Brexit.” Farage said May has no credibility and “needs to go.”
“Folks, if you believe in true conservative values, even when you think you’ve won, you haven’t. You have to go on fighting,” he said. “The United Kingdom has a prime minister whose job is to oversee the Brexit process yet who supported the other side in the war, and I don’t think she’s a credible leader in the United Kingdom and for the sake of everybody she needs to go.”
Farage said the best part of 2016 for him was “the faces of the CNN presenters as it became clear that the 45th president of the USA was going to be Donald J. Trump.”
He argued that the mainstream media still does not understand why Brexit happened or how Trump won.
“We’ve seen a media whose hostility, I think, to both Brexit and Trump is perhaps even more shrill today than it was in the initial aftermath shock of those elections last year. I mean, frankly, if I was to admit that I drunk a glass of Russian vodka at some point in the last few years then maybe the story that I’m a person of interest to the FBI would actually have some legs, but these are the ridiculous conspiratorial levels that our media have gone to,” he said.
“See, our political establishment, our political class and our liberal media simply still don’t believe that Brexit and Trump happened, and therefore they’re trying to find some reason, they’re trying to find some excuse for why the whole thing happened. They don’t understand that it was an upwelling and an uprising of ordinary people,” he added.
Farage said it’s important to remember the parallels of Brexit and Trump’s campaign.
“What both campaigns had and what touched the heart and soul of British people and American people was no more apologies for who we are,” he said.
Farage said both Brexit and the Trump campaigns were not afraid to take on the issue of illegal immigration control.
“We must not allow those that wish to bury this subject and take it away to ever get their upper hand. Believing in one’s country, controlling our borders, they were key elements to the Brexit and the Trump victory,” he said.
Farage said global corporatism has replaced free market capitalism in the West.
“If anybody on the left on your campuses now tells you capitalism is the problem in the West, they’re wrong. We’ve surrendered free market capitalism. It doesn’t exist anymore. We are now living in an age of global corporatism. We are living in an age where the big banks, big businesses, effectively own the political process,” he continued. “And what they do is to wrap every single industry in the most complex set of laws that the barriers to entry for small- and medium-sized competitors become impossible. And that is why we are living in a world where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poor, and what Brexit was about and what Trump was about was taking on these big, massive, labyrinthine legal structures and giving ordinary people a decent break and a chance in life – and we must never, ever forget the importance of that.”
Farage, who stepped down as head of the UKIP in 2016 and is currently a member of the European Parliament for South East England, hinted at returning to British politics.
“I think we’re going to get Brexit but we may finish up in two years’ time with Brexit in name only,” he said. “And all I can tell you, having spent 25 years of my life fighting for the cause that everybody said was literally impossible, was bonkers, could never happen, all I can say is that if Brexit is frustrated then I would have absolutely no choice personally but to throw myself back into the frontline fight for British politics to make sure we do really, really get it.”