
Brexit: UKIP Leader Nigel Farage Resigns - peterkshultz
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/brexit-ukip-leader-nigel-farage-resigns-160704091835096.html
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_98fj
Destroying stuff is just more fun than building stuff. That applies to kids in
the sandbox like it does to ill-bred grown-up politicians.

Dropping a bomb onto a house is more fun than building one.

Leaving the EU with a bang was certainly more fun to him than the long
negotiations that follow could ever be.

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cantagi
UKIP is very right wing and no mainstream party will normally want to ally
with them. Farage clearly wants to join the Conservative cabinet for post-
brexit negotiations. He will probably join Andrea Leadsom's campaign, who has
refused to rule out the possibility of giving him a position in the cabinet.

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arethuza
I think he'll get a peerage and be in the cabinet within the year.

~~~
andyjohnson0
UKIP in its current form is a continuing threat to the tories. They won't want
anything to do with him.

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arethuza
I don't think UKIP will merge with the Conservatives, I suspect Farage will be
offered a peerage by the next Conservative leader, _particularly_ if they
weren't a strong Brexit supporter.

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ddebernardy
Classy... He heavily contributed to creating a mess... admits it was based on
lies... and is now jumping ship instead of helping steer it so it weathers the
storm...

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masklinn
Then again his goal was never to help steer anything or weather any storm[0],
ol' nige was always in it for the destruction, his UKIP work is done, he's
moving on to the next think he can fuck up.

[0] or he'd have been present at more than more than _1 /42_ meetings over his
three years on the European Parliament Fisheries Committee, and would have
voted or officially abstained on policy (as most other UKIP MEP did) instead
of not showing up at all.

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k-mcgrady
Makes sense. He's achieved a goal he's spent his political career working for.
And as such a minority party he'll have little say in the actual negotiations
so why not retire?

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atmosx
Shouldn't he wait until the actual negotiations come to an end?

Farage is the second major pro-Brexit campaigner to quit, don't you find it
curious?

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zakk
> Shouldn't he wait until the actual negotiations come to an end?

The negotiations will be done by the government.

Mr Farage will have no role in the negotiations.

Why waiting for something you have absolutely no role in?

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sidcool
Looks like he understood what a mess he has created. It's more of 'I am
getting out before shit hits the fan' type decision.

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hellodevnull
So many comments in this thread regurgitating the same drivel, which by the
way adds no value to the discussion. A man spends decades of his life working
on something, and now you're telling me, after he achieves his goal, that he's
having an epiphany and no longer believes in it?

There's a political bubble here on HN (a lot of hate for Brexit/UKIP), but
that's not a reason to be able to make silly comments like this.

~~~
sidcool
I do agree that mine was a quick, to of my mind comment . But it looks
suspicious at first glance. He is not all that high and mighty as he's
sounding.

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tremon
This is getting funny, but maybe I just don't get it: to me it looks like all
major figureheads of both sides of the Brexit campaign are refusing to lead
their country to the next step.

PM Cameron I can understand, he never wanted out of the EU so for him to step
down was probably unavoidable. But that both Johnson and Farage are refusing
to pick up the torch they've been given is inexcusable to me.

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gadders
UKIP only have one MP in the UK Parliament, it would be unlikely they would be
part of any Brexit negotiations.

Boris decided not to run as Tory Leader as you need a certain number of MPs to
vote for you, and the top two candidates are then voted on by the Conservative
Party Membership. I believe that when Gove started his own campaign, he took a
lot of Boris's support away and he didn't have the necessary numbers of MPs to
stand a chance of success.

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jamiethompson
Crashes car. Walks away.

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moomin
Arron Banks, the main funding for UKIP, had already lost faith in Farage.
Farage had also fallen out with Doug Carswell. Looks like a coup, pure and
simple.

I wouldn't discount Farage coming back, though.

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jacquesm
As much as I dislike Farage and everything he stands for (1) British politics
is better off without him and his toxic divisiveness and (2) his party is so
small that he couldn't make any difference anyway.

He's done enough damage so please let him go and let's hope he _stays gone_
this time around (he already left once before and then came back to campaign
for the 'leave' camp).

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chrisseaton
> his party is so small that he couldn't make any difference anyway

> He's done enough damage

These seem contradictory.

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jacquesm
His party has only 1 single seat. But Farage as a person has been instrumental
in creating strife. Much like Wilders in NL (who has far more seats in
parliament here), politically he doesn't have much clout but he is very
capable of fomenting dissent and division within our society (and the press is
complicit in giving him a disproportional amount of airtime to spew his
provocative bile).

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UVB-76
_> His party has only 1 single seat._

Number of seats in Parliament is a poor measure of influence. UKIP has had a
major impact on British politics, particularly at the last General Election.

So much so that the EU Referendum was called, and indeed, a majority voted to
fulfil the central purpose of UKIP.

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gonvaled
It occurred to me that with so much backstabbing in brexit rangs, one
disgruntled key figure could bring the whole house crashing down. What would
happen if BoJo would anounce “the whole thing was just a big lie, and I need
to clear my conscience“ - irregardless of the merit of the statement, just out
of spite.

It just seems to me that emotions are running wild post referendum in the
leave camp.

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ProxCoques
There is no way Farage will leave politics. This is the man who stood for MP
SEVEN TIMES and failed (so he became an MEP instead).

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eva1984
This is like trolling everyone for no real good reason..Confusing to say the
least

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cm2187
I presume UKIP will dissolve too. The party had the unique goal of getting the
UK to leave the EU. Now that they achieved it, their _raison d 'etre_ is gone.

~~~
andyjohnson0
Not a chance, unfortunately. The membership are still there and they're still
angry. My guess is that, having tasted political blood, they'll want more -
and move further to the right. Something like France's Front National, or one
of the openly fascist eastern European parties. I'm fairly sure that the
remaining party leadership won't like this, in which case they will probably
be replaced by new people who do.

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philjackson
I wonder if he'll move to Germany with his German wife.

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kyriakos
He will continue being an MEP for another 2 years. Sounds like a bad joke.

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wookey
Resigns [Again]. I am sure he will be back being a plank once this round of
heat lessens.

~~~
cocotino
He tried, but they didn't let him. And taking into account what he's achieved,
I can understand why. :-)

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atmosx
Doesn't make sense, at all.

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satysin
Sure it does. Nobody had plan for what "Brexit" actually _means_ for the
country. Farage just shouted louder and louder for 25 years until a
combination of things swung things his way. Now real, difficult work has to be
done he wants out of the spotlight as quickly as possible.

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estefan
I wonder if BoJo and Farage are foreign plants...

If the Tories have any sense they'll drag this out for a year or two, get a
rubbish set of new proposals, give us a new referendum and people will vote to
stay this time.

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ProxCoques
That's probably as good a bet as anything else right now.

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atmosx
UPDATE: [http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/11/nigel-
farage...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/11/nigel-farage-
withdraws-resignation-as-ukip-leader)

~~~
elemenopy
That's from May last year, when he resigned and then un-resigned after failing
to win his seat in the last election.

Of course, possible a similar thing could happen again.

