Nigel Farage says he is quitting politics to spend his time fighting Britain’s culture wars.
The 56-year-old ex-leader of Ukip, the Brexit Party and latterly the Reform UK party said he had “knocked on his last door” in an interview with the Telegraph.
“There is no going back – Brexit is done. That won’t be reversed,” he said. “I know I’ve come back once or twice when people thought I’d gone, but this is it. It’s done. It’s over.”
Farage has claimed to be exiting frontline politics before, most notably after the 2016 referendum, saying “I want my life back”. But he was back at the head of the Brexit Party within two years, leading them to a winning haul in the 2019 European Parliament elections.
“Now’s the moment for me to say I’ve knocked on my last door. I’m going to step down as the leader of Reform UK,” he said, referring to the rebrand of the Brexit Party, which Farage positioned to oppose lockdown restrictions last year.
“I’ll have no executive position at all. I’m quite happy to have an honorary one, but party politics, campaigning, being involved in elections, that is now over for me because I’ve achieved the one thing I set out to do: achieve the independence of the UK.”
Farage reportedly plans to spend his time seeking to influence the debate over the UK’s relationship with China, and wading into the country’s culture wars.
He lashed out at the “woke agenda”, which he said was “literally the indoctrination of our children from primary school all the way through university with a completely different interpretation of our history”.
He added: “I see our communities being divided more than ever by this agenda. And I’m very worried about it. I want to fight all those things.
“I have built up over these years quite a considerable social media platform. I’ve got reach. So I want to go on influencing the debate. I want to go on changing debate. But I can do that without going out and fighting elections.”
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