Tag: Claire Fox

Nigel Farage’s Brexit party has unveiled a former revolutionary communist who once supported Irish republicanism and opposed the Good Friday peace deal as one of five new candidates for the European elections. Claire Fox, who now styles herself as a libertarian and is a panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze programme, told the launch event she most likely only agreed with Farage on one issue – Brexit. Claire Fox: infamy's child Read more “I’ve spent my whole life fighting for leftwing causes, so I can tell you, no one is more surprised than me to be standing as candidate for Nigel Farage’s Brexit party,” said Fox, a former member of the Revolutionary Communist party who is still involved in some of its successor organisations, such as the Academy of Ideas, which she heads. “To be honest, Nigel and I are unlikely to agree on a range of issues – workers, women’s rights, immigration, public services,” Fox told the launch event in Westminster. Earlier, Farage had promised his organisation would be about more than Brexit, saying it was “about changing politics for good, changing the shape of our political parties”. He added: “Please don’t think for one moment that the Brexit party is here just to get a process vote on 23 May – far from it, 23 May for us is just the beginning. “We have a two-party system and those parties now serve nothing, frankly, but themselves.” Farage castigated Labour for, as he put it, reneging on its promise to support Brexit, saying: “We’re going to go after that Labour vote in a very big way.” The other candidates unveiled were Lance Forman, a strongly pro-Brexit businessman who heads a family fish company; James Glancy, an ex-soldier who is now an environmental activist; Matthew Patten, a charity executive; and Christina Jordan, a former nurse described by the party as a community leader. Recent polls have suggested Farage’s new party, formed after he left Ukip over its switch to a hard-right, anti-Islam stance, could win the most votes if the UK takes part in European elections on 23 May. Before Easter, the party announced its first five candidates, among them Annunziata Rees-Mogg, sister of the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Richard Tice, a property millionaire and long-time Farage ally who will also chair the party.