British politician Nigel Farage is relaunching his Brexit Party by refocusing it to fight the British government’s lockdown measures in place to curb the spread of coronavirus.
Farage, previously at the head of the anti-immigration movement Ukip, launched the Brexit Party almost two years ago to put pressure on former Prime Minister Theresa May to implement as soon as possible the Brexit, voted in 2016.
As Brexit happened, Farage's party had somewhat lost its reason to exist, even though the country remains bound by European rules in a transition period which ends on 31 December. The Covid-19 crisis once again gave Farage some ground to grind and he announced the launch of "Reform UK."
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Farage announced that it is “time to redirect our energies," in an op-ed published in the Sunday Telegraph, lamenting that "the debate over how to respond to Covid is becoming even more toxic than that over Brexit.”
The “single most pressing issue,” according to Farage, is the government’s “woeful” response to the coronavirus pandemic, saying that Its strategy is to terrify the nation into submission, with confinement, rules and threats.
The United Kingdom, the most affected country in Europe with 46,717 deaths and 1,034,914 confirmed cases, is now being hit hard by the second wave of the epidemic, with the British government imposing a new lockdown in England from 5 November to 2 December.
“It’s time to take action because there is no alternative,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson when announcing the lockdown, during which people will be allowed to leave their homes only for essential activities.
Meanwhile, Farage opined that lockdowns do more harm than good, as he told the European Parliament, calling for measures similar to those taken in Sweden, which uses local measures.
Jason Spinks
The Brussels Times
