Politics

Flashback: To when Tony Blair gave Nigel Farage a dressing down in the European Parliament

Nigel Farage is in the news again after disclosing that he’s been relying on a self-styled misogynist bunkered up in Romania for his information.

The Reform UK man, who definitely didn’t say the police are liars in the wake of the Southport attacks, posted that there were “reports” that the suspect was being monitored by the security services in the wake of the incident last week.

But it turns out his initial intuition was based on misleading reports propagated by characters such as Andrew Tate on social media, who is currently awaiting trial in Romania on charges of human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.

His refusal to climb down over the remarks has led to some people posting a clip of the time he went toe-to-toe with Sir Tony Blair in the European Parliament.

The former UKIP man attacked Blair for building “new sewers in Budapest”, leading the ex-PM to let rip, saying: “You sit there with our country’s flag, but you do not represent our country’s interests.

“This is the year 2005, not 1945. We are not fighting each other any more.”

To loud cheers, the former PM pointed to MEPs from 25 countries who had crowded into a large committee room to hear his last address as EU president.

“These are our partners, our colleagues, and our future lies in Europe. And when you and your colleagues say, ‘What do we get for what we contribute to enlargement?’, we get a Europe that is unified after years of dictatorships in the east, and we get economic development, and we get a budget which puts for once and for all an end to the need for the rebate. That’s what we get, if we have the vision to seize it.”

Watch the footage in full below:

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Jack Peat

Jack is a business and economics journalist and the founder of The London Economic (TLE). He has contributed articles to VICE, Huffington Post and Independent and is a published author. Jack read History at the University of Wales, Bangor and has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

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