Nigel Farage is betraying his own voters

A vote for the ‘Brexit Party’ is now a vote for a no-deal Brexit, which no one in the country has ever voted for before

Credit where it’s due. It had not yet been 24 hours since Nigel Farage had been on the Sunday politics shows, warning of the “final betrayal” that was coming. And here he was, not even waiting for it to come, but delivering it himself.

The Brexit Party, the party Farage set up himself to contest the European elections he so desperately does not want to be contesting, was holding a press conference to announce it was betraying its own voters.

Farage was introduced by the Brexit Party chairman, a man called Richard Tice, who is best known, though nevertheless unknown, for appearing at political events in a white open-topped bus with “Leave Means Leave” painted down the side.

When it turned up at Tory party conference last year, he promised free non-EU booze to anyone who could spare five minutes to talk to him.

Two people turned up, and one of them, I must reveal, was your humble sketch writer, there exclusively to take the piss out of the whole thing. It did not prove hard.

Anyway, I digress. Tice had a message, and that message was that a vote for the Brexit Party in the European elections was a vote for “a WTO Brexit”, which is better known as a “no-deal Brexit” and best understood as a Place-Sanctions-On-Yourself Brexit.

Quite the volte face then. When Farage and co were going round the country three years ago, armed with slightly different lies, no one whispered a word about no-deal Brexit. Asked about it at the time, Farage’s view was that Angela Merkel simply wouldn’t allow it. She would be running for president again in 2017, and the German car makers would be so angry about it, “she would throw the election”.

And yet, here we are, three years on, and, wouldn’t you know, Farage is betraying himself. Betraying everyone he talked round to his cause three years ago, betraying everything he’s ever said, just for the sake of standing in an election, which, just to be absolutely clear, he absolutely definitely doesn’t want to be standing in. Oh no.

This was nevertheless, the less startling of the two big announcements. For we also learn that as well as a vote for the Brexit Party being a vote for “WTO Brexit”, it is also a vote for the Brexit Party’s MEPs to be involved in the Brexit negotiations. It is a vote to simultaneously sit down at the negotiating table and turn it over and walk away.

And who would be doing the negotiating? “The highest quality candidates,” claimed Tice, which are currently not limited to Ann Widdecombe and former Loaded mag editor Martin Daubney, who not so long ago was proud to organise a “straight pride” march through London, fearlessly sticking it to gay pride, standing up for downtrodden straight men everywhere.

The betrayal Farage had been warning about still hasn’t come, by the way. That “betrayal” is a May/Corbyn deal on a temporary customs union, which we are led to believe is imminent but has not yet happened.

If it does, Farage will have every right to be angry. He warned about this at the time, if you remember. He warned and no one listened. You’ll recall the “Breaking Point” poster, where he stood in front of a non-existent queue of lorries stretching no distance whatsoever up the M20, warning that the British people had had enough of frictionless trade with the European Union.

That just-in-time supply chain had to be smashed up. It was never about free movement, ended under Theresa May’s deal. Never about payments to the EU, also ended. It was always, always, about the customs union.

And if that’s not how you remember it, then maybe, just maybe, the betrayers aren’t who Farage says they are.