Did Farage Vote in Camera to remain in the EU. Or is this Tory Bojo Fake News.

NIGEL FARAGE BREXIT U-TURN

I found this in a collection of replies to a sub-topic under a main topic in this group and I didn’t know whether to believe it, so I got in touch with Stuart Agnew and he confirmed that it’s true, it’s an extract from his diary which is sent to all Eastern region email subscribers.

I thought I should bring it up front and re-post it as a main topic, so here it is (note especially the 4th paragraph):

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MY WEEK STUART AGNEW MEP

I was in Brussels last week voting in Committees. I also attended a Green Warmist farming event as the fly in the ointment. We were told that Fen soils should no longer be cultivated. Reeds suitable for thatching should be established and regularly harvested for roof thatching, which must be promoted because this would ‘sequester’ CO2. I spoilt the party by pointing out that thatched roofs require re-thatching every thirty years or so and that the old thatch is either left to rot or is burnt, releasing its CO2. The Fen soils found in the west of our region are highly fertile, producing a significant quantity of food. Abandoning a farming area about the size of Bedfordshire (NB: that County is not in the Fens) in the futile hope that this will improve the world’s weather will just increase our dependency on other countries to feed us.

The main highlight of the week was a surprise invitation to attend the ‘Conference of Presidents’ as the substitute of the ENF Group Leader Nicholas Bay. This event is held monthly and comprises the leaders of the eight Political Groups, chaired by Tajani the President of the Parliament. They usually discuss Parliamentary procedure. On Wednesday an emergency meeting was called just ahead of Theresa May’s visit to grovel for yet another extension. The President wanted to consult the leaders of the Groups, before he himself attended the European Council Meeting to sound out the views of the Parliament. If, thirty years ago, someone had said to me that on 10th April 2019 I would be personally consulted as one of the nine most senior members of the European Parliament on my view as to whether the EU should grant an extension to the UK to remain in the EU, I would have pointed to a flying pig.

Nevertheless, there we all were. Each MEP had their Group’s most senior civil servant beside them, plus all the inevitable Parliament secretarial sidekicks, sycophants and hangers-on, etc. Each MEP was asked in turn whether they thought an extension should be granted. There is a pecking order here, with the leader of the largest Group (Manfred Weber of the EPP) being consulted first and so on. None of the first six leaders objected to an extension, but some insisted that full EU rules must apply to all UK citizens, and others that any interim conditions agreed by Theresa May could not be revoked by another UK Prime Minister.

It was then Nigel Farage’s turn to speak (leader of the EFDD Group) followed by myself. Following Farage as a speaker is very much a ‘graveyard slot’ and I was wondering how I could hold anyone’s attention after one of his barnstormers. What he said, however, utterly astonished me. The meeting was ‘in camera’ which means it is not broadcast. He stated that he wanted an extension of Britain’s EU membership so that he could parade the candidates of his new Party. I have known him for 20 of the 25 years that he has been campaigning against EU membership. To hear him say he wanted to remain in the EU, when there was a genuine opportunity to leave 48 hours later, was akin to hearing Geoffrey Boycott saying he would support Lancashire against Yorkshire. It was the very last thing I expected.

It did at least give me a chance to say what he should have done, and with a fair degree of passion. The main thrust of my statement was that whilst many British MPs were frightened of self-government and a so called cliff edge, I could remember ‘Brentry’ as a voting adult in 1973 and the days when the EU did not interfere in British government. I outlined a list of examples of interferences with each passing Treaty and how increased interference made Britain more difficult to govern, not easier. I urged the President to urge Donald Tusk to expel the UK from the EU so that we could forget politics and start talking trade. My intervention was not well received.

I am now concerned that touring the country giving such eloquent, engaging, enjoyable and entertaining anti-EU speeches has become such a raison d’etre for Nigel, that the prospect of all that finishing last Friday was the equivalent of the farmer shooting the huntsman’s fox.

On route home on Thursday I had lunch in the Farmers Club with a British Canadian, Jim Buckingham, who had campaigned with me in the 2004 European Parliament elections. He comes to Britain in alternate years and maintains an intense interest in the politics of both countries. He tells me that Canada’s soft left Prime Minister Trudeau is racking up a huge public spending deficit. It sounded almost as irresponsible as Greece in the early 2000s.

I was in for a disappointment when I got home. My middle son Kit has joined UKIP and wanted to give me the very pleasant surprise of going into the polling station for the local elections on May 2nd and seeing his name as the UKIP candidate on the ballot paper. Unfortunately, he didn’t understand the process for doing this. He obtained a clean bill of health from HQ on the internet and then assumed it would all be taken care of. If only he had mentioned this to me, I could have put him in touch with our Branch Chairman, David Moreland, who would have shown him the way. Breaking the good news to me at that stage would have made his old Dad a very happy man. I can’t help wondering if other young Kippers have made a similar mistake and we have lost candidates unnecessarily in this way.

On Friday I listened to Gerard Batten on ‘Any Questions’. Inevitably, Jonathan Dimbleby introduced Gerard with the ‘death cult’ quote. Gerard might have pointed out that last week the Sultan of Brunei announced that in the name of Islam all homosexuals would henceforth be stoned to death. If burying somebody up to his waist in a public place and inviting passers-by to throw stones at him until he dies of his injuries is not a ‘death cult’, what is?