As the July 4 parliamentary elections approach, the British far right is experiencing a breakthrough in the polls, moving closer to – or even overtaking – the ruling Conservative Party.
The leader of Britain’s far-right Reform UK party, Nigel Farage, said the West had “provoked” the war in Ukraine with “the eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union”which drew strong criticism on June 22.
This former MEP, who played a major role in the Brexit campaign in 2016, claimed on the BBC on Friday evening that as early as 2014, he had told the European Parliament that there would be a war in Ukraine.
Breakthrough of the British far right in the polls
As the legislative elections on July 4 approach, his party is experiencing a breakthrough in the polls, approaching – or even surpassing – the conservative party in power. “It seemed obvious to me that the eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union gave (Russian President Vladimir Putin) a reason to say to his Russian people: ‘They are coming for us again’ and to go to war”, did he declare. Nigel Farage said to have made similar comments “since the 1990s, since the fall of the wall” from Berlin, in 1989.
“Wait a second, we started this war”he then said. “Of course it’s his (Vladimir Putin’s) fault – he used what we did as an excuse”, added the head of Reform UK, who is a candidate for the legislative elections in a constituency in the south-east of England. Asked about past statements, Nigel Farage says he doesn’t like Vladimir Putin “as a person” but “admire him as a political operator”.
‘Farage echoes Putin’s vile justification for brutal invasion of Ukraine’reacted Interior Minister James Cleverly on X. John Healy, in charge of defense issues in the Labor Party, told him that Nigel Farage “would rather lick Vladimir Putin’s boots than defend the Ukrainian people”. “Churchill is going to turn in his grave”reacted for his part the former Minister of Defense Tobias Ellwood in the Daily Telegraph.