Reform EU pledge "utter bunkum"
At the same time in a powerful speech to the European Parliament, the UKIP leader also warned that the EU is now run by big business, big banks and big bureaucrats with an anti-democratic thirst for power.
Mr Farage speaking outside parliament in Strasbourg commented
"Once again we have the Conservatives talking about EU reform, and once again their claims are utter bunkum. The cat is already out of the bag; the Prime Minister has repeatedly asserted that his intention is to keep the UK in the EU in order to try to reform it from the inside. Yet he has seen over the past year, since his ill fated Bloomberg speech, that every time he tried to push for a little change, he simply gets swept aside by the EU juggernaught.
"The Conservatives are not going to get re-elected with a majority next year so we can wave goodbye to that referendum pledge, even if anyone trusted another David Cameron referendum pledge. The EU is not going to suddenly turn around and be dictated to by a man with only 15 months left as Prime Minister and who has repeatedy caved in to their demands and given away any leverage in the negotiations he may have had by declaring his support for EU membership.
Mr. Farage continues:
"The sorts of things that would make a real difference in the UK in terms of renegotiation and reform would only be achieved by dismantling fundamental aspects of the EU such as the way the Single Market operates, the free movement of peoples and so on. None of these are on the table. Instead we see an EU that is now run by big business, big banks and big bureaucrats, effectively now running nations such as Greece. The EU's anti-democratic thirst for power shows no sign of abating.
"But the Chancellor has got something right. The EU is condemning itself to a bleak future with its multilayers of bureaucracy and regulation, its obsessive clinging to a failing currency and its knee jerk response of trying to forge an ever closer union. And yet we have a Prime Minister who, despite all this, is still hell bent on shackling the UK to Brussels."
