Farage claims 'I am now convinced that we will have a summer general election'

Farage claims 'I am now convinced that we will have a summer general election'
Gabrielle Wilde

By Gabrielle Wilde


Published: 22/04/2024

- 21:44

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave a speech about the Rwanda Bill this morning

Nigel Farage has predicted Britain will go to the polls this Summer.

Speaking on GBNews, Mr Farage said the speech made by Rishi Sunak on his Rwanda policy had left him more convinced an early election was likely.

It’s a prediction backed by Jacob Rees Mogg who told the former UKIP leader the “mood music was shifting towards a Summer election”.

Explaining the thinking behind his rationale, Mr Farage told GBNews: “Today, the Prime Minister said ‘no foreign court will stop us from getting these flights off’.

"Now that is a very bold statement for a British Prime Minister to make. He's basically saying whatever is said by that court in Strasburg, we are simply going to ignore it. But he knows that half his own party, half his own MPs, would be appalled by that because they think the European Court of Human Rights is a good thing.

“What he didn't tell you is even if we were to ignore the European Court of Human Rights, which I believe to be very, very unlikely, indeed, we still have something called the Human Rights Act of 1998, which incorporated the very convention that is used by that court in Strasbourg.

“This idea that those planes are ‘going to Rwanda in 10 to 12 weeks time come what may’, folks, believe me, it isn't going to happen. And I've been right about this consistently for the last four years. Sorry, to sound a bit big headed, but literally I have been right about this. I predicted the crisis. I've said all the way through Rwanda it wouldn't work.

“And because of that, I've rather changed my view today on something quite significant. If you'd asked me first thing this morning before that speech, whether there would be a summer general election, not an autumn general election, I’d have said, ‘Well, I reckon it's two thirds on it being an autumn election, a third on it being a summer election’.

“I have now shifted my view today.. I would now say it's two thirds likely that we're going to have a general election at the end of June or early July, however, well or badly the Conservatives may do in the elections coming up next week.

“Frankly, the reason I think there's going to be an early election is because you can't keep upping the ante on stopping the boats and sending people to Rwanda and keep failing. He must know, his advisers must know, that all the while the Human Rights Act is there in law there will be lawyers on behalf of people who are going to be deported, who will go to the courts and British judges will find in their favour and not allow them to go to Rwanda.

"So rather than wait, for what seems to be his flagship policy to disintegrate, he'll call a general election before making promises that he can't deliver. That's my thought.”

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