Brexit leader Nigel Farage urges Germans to lead revolt against EU

Britain’s former UKIP party leader Nigel Farage on Friday said Germans should lead a revolt against Brussels as he joined a campaign rally of the anti-immigration and Eurosceptic AfD party.

Farage said he was amazed Brexit had barely figured in debates between Chancellor Angela Merkel and her centre-left challenger Martin Schulz, the former European Parliament president, whom he labelled “a pro-EU fanatic”, ahead of September 24 elections.

“It’s all too embarrassing to admit that their beloved European project is now about to be exited by one of the big countries,” said Farage, whose UK Independence Party was the driving force that led to Britain’s shock vote to leave the European Union in 2019.

Farage insisted he was at the Alternative for Germany (AfD) event at the “personal invitation” of his fellow European Parliament member, the AfD’s Beatrix von Storch, the granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister Lutz von Krosigk.

Farage said he wanted “to get a proper debate going in the biggest, richest, most important and powerful country in Europe about not just the shape of Brexit but perhaps even the shape of the European project to come”.

He said Germany, as the biggest EU economy, should “say to Brussels: look, the reason the Brits left is because you’re behaving so badly, you’re taking away so much of people’s freedom, liberty and democracy”.