Arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage has admitted that leaving the EU has “failed” as he sought to blame the government for what he described as its inability to take advantage of being outside the trading bloc.
The former Brexit and UKIP Party leader, who refused to rule out a political comeback, said the UK had not “benefitted from Brexit economically”, claiming that government policy had deterred businesses from investing in the UK.
His comments came as a row brewed in the Conservative Party over immigration with Suella Braverman, the home secretary, calling for overall numbers to come down in a speech at the National Conservative Conference that was viewed by some as a pitch for the future leadership.
In an interview with BBC Newsnight on Monday, Mr Farage lambasted UK politicians for being “as useless as the commissioners” in Brussels and accused the government of failing to control Britain’s borders.
It was put to Mr Farage, who presents a show on GB News after quitting politics, that recent polling appeared to show an increasing number of people who voted for Brexit now regret the decision and that the UK was the only G7 economy not to return to pre-pandemic levels.
“I don’t think that for a moment,” Mr Farage replied when he was asked if the UK would have been better off staying in the EU, the world’s largest single market area. “But what I do think is we haven’t actually benefitted from Brexit economically, what we could have done.”
“I mean, what Brexit’s proved, I’m afraid, is that our politicians are about as useless as the commissioners in Brussels were,” he added. “We’ve mismanaged this totally, and if you look at simple things…such as takeovers, such as corporation tax, we are driving business away from our country.
“Arguably, now we’re back in control, we’re regulating our own businesses even more than they were as EU members. Brexit has failed.”
When asked if he was considering a political comeback to tackle what he said was the government’s failure on Brexit, Mr Farage replied: “Well, I wouldn’t rule it out. It’s not at the top of my bucket list but frankly we’ve not delivered on borders, we’ve not delivered on Brexit. The Tories have let us down very, very badly.”
In March the UK’s independent Office for Budget Responsibility said that the impact of Brexit on the UK economy was on the same “magnitude” as the Covid pandemic and energy price crisis.
In a grim assessment, OBR chair Richard Hughes also warned that it would take five years before people’s spending power recovers to pre-coronavirus levels.
Britain’s gross domestic product (GDP) would be 4 per cent smaller than if the country had stayed in the EU, he said.
The OBR chief said the country is undergoing the “biggest squeeze on living standards” on record. “But we do expect, as we get past this year and we go into the next three or four years, that real income starts to recover.”
He added: “But it’s still the case that people’s real spending power doesn’t get back to the level it was before the pandemic even after five years, even by the time we get to the late 2020s.”
Mr Hughes said economic growth had been held back because of “supply constraints” – pointing to labour shortages and an investment slump.
“We’ve lost around 500,000 people from the labour force, we’ve seen stagnant investment since 2016 and also our productivity has slowed dramatically since the financial crisis and not really recovered,” he said.
Reports on Monday morning, ahead of Ms Braverman’s speech, said the home secretary would put pressure on prime minister Rishi Sunak to bring down overall immigration.
Speaking at the conference Ms Braverman said more Britons should be trained as HGV drivers, fruit pickers and butchers so the UK does not have to rely on foreign workers to fill jobs.
Appearing on Times Radio later in the morning Nigel Huddleston, the trade minister, said Britain needs immigration to rise “now and again”, in remarks that appeared to contradict the home secretary.
Mr Huddleston stressed that there would “always be peaks and troughs” in levels of immigration, with figures next week expected to show a surge in arrivals to the UK.
Downing Street later said Ms Braverman speaks on behalf of the government and denied Mr Farage’s claim that Brexit “has failed”.
Responding to the former Eurosceptic campaigner-turned-broadcaster’s comments, No 10 pointed to freedoms being enjoyed in the British farming sector as an example of how the divorce from the EU was allowing the UK to take a more tailored approach to policies.
Asked whether Rishi Sunak — who campaigned to leave the EU — agreed with Mr Farage’s sentiments, the prime minister’s official spokesman said: “No.”
“I think the prime minister has talked about the benefits of Brexit on a number of occasions,” he added.
“Just thinking about farming alone, we’re talking about some of the benefits of moving away from a bureaucratic cap which skewed money towards the largest landowners, with 50% going to the largest 10 per cent.
“We have a fairer system tailored to British farmers post-Brexit.”
The spokesman added: “On the issue of being able to use gene-editing technology to mimic the natural breeding process to help farmers to grow more nutritious, productive crops, those are just two examples in one sector of the benefits that the public and UK businesses enjoy.”
