Nigel Farage has launched a fiery attack on new Labour leader Andy Burnham, branding his acceptance speech today “vacuous”.
Speaking at the CPAC Conference in London, the Reform UK leader accused the soon-to-be Prime Minister of being a “great chameleon of British politics”.
Poking fun at Mr Burnham’s attire, Mr Farage began: “We’re actually engaged in a battle for the very soul of our nation to define what we actually are, what we stand for, what our values are, because they’re under attack in just the most astonishing and extraordinary way.
“But it’s okay, because on Monday -he even wore a tie, I was most surprised, I must say – on Monday we’ll have a new Prime Minister.”
The Reform leader continued: “Our seventh Prime Minister in 10 years, and we used to laugh at the Italians. He comes in with absolutely no mandate of any kind at all, none.
“He says he wants to change the direction of politics in the most fundamental way for 40 years, because everything he says that is wrong in Britain is because of what happened in the 1980s. That is 40 years ago.
“And I watched his acceptance speech earlier on today, and I have to say, I find the whole thing utterly vacuous.”
Mr Farage accused Mr Burnham of being a “great chameleon of British politics”.
He told the conference: “He is capable of being all things to all people, but the big shtick is all about power. It’s all about power.
“He says in the 1980s, power drained away from the people and capitalist interests took away the economic good of the people.”
He added: “So the plan is simple, create lots of mayors all over the country and all will be, well, power draining away. I’ll tell you how power drained away. Power drained away when we joined the European Economic Community.
“Which then became a European Union. And with that, we lost the sovereignty of our own parliament, the ability to make our own laws. Andy Burnham bringing back power, I’ve done more than any individual in British history to bring power back to this country and to its people.”
Mr Farage highlighted that Mr Burnham looked down at his notes more than 200 times during his acceptance speech.
He stressed: “How many times did Andy Burnham look down at his notes in that speech this morning? 266.
“Now, I put it to you that if a political leader is incapable of standing before an audience and stringing a couple of sentences together, they might be doing the job more out of personal ambition than out of conviction and belief in the country.”
The Reform leader said: “And let me tell you something. I don’t need to be in politics, there are many, many other careers I could be pursuing, but I’m doing this not because I want rank, title, or position.”
He made clear: “I’m doing this because I fear this great country that we love, this great country that those that went before us laid down such incredible sacrifice so that we could be a free, independent democracy who have our arguments in public, but respect the right of the other person to have a different point of view.
“I can see this country, we are going down the drain. Britain is broken. We have to wake up to that fact, acknowledge the extent of the illness.
“And until we do that, we’ll never be able to put the right cures in place.
“I am doing this because I believe in Britain. I’m doing this because I believe we can turn this around and get this country back on the right track.”
