Last week, Prime Minister Theresa May won a House of Commons victory as MPs supported her bid to go back to Brussels and renegotiate her Brexit deal. However, despite the win, there is still much uncertainty as the UK is still locked into the exit deadline of March 29 and the EU has claimed it will not reopen negotiations. Former Ukip leader and prominent Brexiteer Nigel Farage said on Wednesday that the prospect of a no-deal Brexit has increased because of the attitude of Brussels “fanatics” who refuse to compromise.
Mr Farage said there was an “appreciation in Britain that unelected bureaucrats in Brussels have been talking down to and humiliating the Prime Minister of our nation, and we don’t like it”.
He added: “Many will say we are simply dealing with fanatics who are not prepared to be reasonable and make any sense of compromise.”
Mr Farage, who has been a member of the European Parliament for South East England since 1999, has long campaigned for the UK to leave the bloc.
15 years ago, the politician was already ferociously attacking Brussels, claiming the system was “rotten” to the core.
In 2004 documentary “The Real Face of the European Union”, Mr Farage recalled one of the biggest scandals in the history of the EU to highlight the “corruption” within its system – when Dutch whistleblower, Paul van Buitenen, exposed rife corruption within the bloc.
He said: “In 1998, a man called Paul van Buitenen, who worked in the European Commission, decided that fraud, waste, mismanagement, corruption and nepotism had become so bad that no longer could he hold his peace and he went public.
“He became the first whistleblower.
“It turned out that, in fact, all of his claims were right and the entire European Commission was forced to resign in disgrace.”
The former Ukip leader noted that the President of the Commission at the time, Jacques Santer, subsequently became a member of the European Parliament for Luxembourg, and EU commissioner Neil Kinnock, who also resigned, was later appointed Vice President of the governing body and put in charge of “sorting out fraud”.
Mr Farage added: “How well has he done?
“There is now another whistleblower, her name is Marta Andreasen.
“She went to Commissioner Kinnock and said ‘look, I am sorry Commissioner Kinnock but I cannot sign off these accounts. You are using a cash-based system. You are not using double-entry book keeping,’ which incidentally was invented in the late 14th century.
“And she said ‘I cannot sign off these accounts as being a true and accurate record of the EU finances.’
“For her trouble she has been suspended pending an investigation.
“Everybody talks about reforming fraud within the European Union.
“I think this whole system is so rotten that is now unreformable.”