'I can't walk down the street alone' Nigel Farage reveals personal cost of Brexit crusade
NIGEL Farage has revealed he is ‘unable to walk down the street alone’ and has received death threats because of his frontline role in engineering Brexit.
GETTY
The former UKIP leader calimed he is unable to live a normal life because of the “constant aggression and unpleasantness” and said his family has also become the target of abuse.
The 53-year-old also branded 11 Tory MPs who voted with opposition parties to defeat the Government on its landmark Brexit Bill this week “ghastly” and “bloody awful people”.
Mr Farage said his “obsession” with freeing the UK from the influence of the European Union had taken over his life “to the detriment of almost everything else” - including his four children.
And he revealed his relationship with his second wife “ran its course”, describing himself as “53, separated and skint”.
Related articles
I can’t walk down the street in London on my own. The level of aggression and unpleasantness is constant
The former City banker said he has received numerous death threats, had the bolts on his car wheel loosened and been pelted with eggs.
He said: “My life is not easy. There’s a lot of aggro to deal with.
“I can’t walk down the street in London on my own. The level of aggression and unpleasantness is constant.
“I’ll never be able to live a normal life in London.”
EPA
He said the threats and abuse have reached the point where he is unable to pop to his local pub in Chelsea without being accompanied by security.
He added his two sons, who are in their 20s, and two daughters, aged just 17 and 12, have also become targets for the abuse.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, the MEP for South East England said: “We’ve got a very unusual surname so it does leave them a little bit vulnerable.
“I tell them not to engage. Ignore it. Don’t answer back.
Related videos
“They’re not going to win, are they? It’s all so unfair.”
He said he had never intended to become involved in politics, but felt compelled to act and leave his banking job after John Major’s government not signed up to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.
He said: “I just had this belief we were going in absolutely the wrong direction and I couldn’t see there was really anyone much in the Establishment who was prepared to stand and fight for this country.”
Mr Farage went on to become a founding member UKIP in 1993, and after more than a decade on the fringes of UK politics, became a prominent figure after rising to become the party’s leader in 2006.
GETTY
Following the 2016 EU referendum, in which more than 17.4 million Brits voted to split from Brussels, Mr Farage came under fire for stoking anti-immigration fears and claiming the divorce would free up more than £350million a week to be spent on public services.
But he insisted he has “never gone out of my way to hurt people”.
He said: “I think I’ve just been pretty obsessed fighting this cause to the detriment of almost everything else. For the past ten years, it’s been a seven-day-a-week obsession and everything else has fallen into second place.
“I think to myself sometimes, 'What have I done well? What have I done badly?'
"I’ve never gone out of my way to hurt people.”
