Nigel Farage launches Brexit Party to ‘change politics for good’ after ‘wilful betrayal’ of EU referendum result

The Brexit Party was launched in Coventry today and is set to fight for seats in the European elections, if Britain takes part in them next month. 

Mr Farage said: ‘There's a demand for a new party is there?

‘In some ways I can scarcely believe I'm doing this.

‘I thought, well, we have won the referendum and then 448 of them said it was going to happen.

‘I think what we have seen over the course of the last four weeks is the betrayal, the wilful betrayal of the greatest democratic exercise of this nation.’ 

Mr Farage continued: ’This party is not here just to fight the European elections... this party is not just to express our anger - May 23 is the first step of the Brexit Party.

‘We will change politics for good.

‘Yes I'm angry but this is not a negative emotion, this is a positive emotion. I said I wanted to cause an earthquake in politics... but now we will achieve a democratic revolution in politics.’

Addressing how he believed the Government had done in handling Brexit, Mr Farage said: ‘We are lions, led by donkeys.’

Speaking about how he believes the Brexit Party would fare in the European elections, MrFarage said: ‘I went to the bookmakers this morning.

‘This morning I have put a thousand pounds on the Brexit Party in the European elections at the odds of three to one.’ 

The Brexit Party will have the same policies as Ukip but will be distanced from the far right, leader Mr Farage has claimed.

‘In terms of policy, there's no difference, but in terms of personnel there is a vast difference,’ he told the Today programme.

‘Ukip did struggle to get enough good people into it but unfortunately what it's chosen to do is allow the far right to join it and take it over and I'm afraid the brand is now tarnished.’

When asked about former Brexit Party leader Catherine Blaiklock, who quit after journalists revealed she had sent racist posts and retweeted those of far-right figures before joining the Brexit Party, he said she was ‘an administrator’.

He said: ‘I set the party up, she was the administrator that got it set up.’ 

Annunziata Rees-Mogg, the sister of Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, has been introduced on stage in Coventry to speak as a supporter of Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party.

Mr Farage introduced Ms Rees-Mogg as a candidate who would be running in the upcoming elections.

She said: ‘I'm here today in sadness.

‘Our democracy has been so betrayed that I have felt the need to be here.’