Ex-UKIP leader Farage launches Brexit Party

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON (AA) – As the turmoil over Brexit now seems likely to last through this fall, the former leader of now-far-right UK Independence Party (UKIP) on Friday launched a new venture, the Brexit Party.

Nigel Farage said at the party launch that he wants a “democratic revolution” in British politics and its “first task” is to “change politics.”

The party launch came shortly after Prime Minister Theresa May agreed with the EU for a longer Brexit extension, now due at the end of October, which means the U.K. will take part in European Parliament elections set for May 23-26.

Farage said the Brexit Party has 70 candidates and that the European elections are the “first step.”

"This party is not here just to fight the European elections,” he said.

“This party is not just to express our anger -- 23 May is the first step of the Brexit Party,” he added.

“We will change politics for good."

Farage, a leading figure in the Leave campaign before the 2016 referendum, said he was "angry, but this is not a negative emotion, this is a positive emotion."

"I said that if I did come back into the political fray it would be no more Mr. Nice Guy and I mean it," he said.

On BBC radio earlier Friday, Farage said: "In terms of policy, there's no difference [from UKIP], but in terms of personnel there is a vast difference.”

He said: "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."

On Twitter, UKIP leader Gerard Batten rejected Farage's claim that there was no policy difference between UKIP and the Brexit Party, calling it "a lie."

"UKIP has a manifesto and policies. Farage's party is just a vehicle for him," he said.

Conservative Brexiteer MP Jacob Rees-Mogg’s sister Annunziate Rees-Mogg is among the new party’s candidates for the May elections.

- UKIP

Since last year, Britain’s once-populist UKIP has become a hotbed for the British far-right under its latest leader, Gerard Batten.

The party has taken a big leap into becoming a racist far-right movement with an manifesto full of anti-Islamic plans.

The so-called “interim manifesto” contained plans for all-Muslim prisons, enhanced screening for migrants from Islamic countries, and plans to scrap a swathe of equality and anti-racism laws in the U.K.

The party claimed extremism is “actively fostered" in jails, where "Muslim gangs hold sway" and "non-Islamic prisoners are converting for their own protection."

"UKIP would introduce the separation of prisoners or prisons exclusively for Islamic prisoners who promote extremism or try to convert non-Islamic prisoners,” the manifesto said.

The sharper shift to the far-right of Farage’s former party came last year with the presidency of Batten, who allied himself with former EDL leader Tommy Robinson after taking over the leadership from Henry Bolton in April.

Robinson is a far-right figure known in the U.K. for his anti-Islamic campaign.

Last year Batten insulted the Prophet Mohammad at a rally organized by the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) -- an anti-Muslim movement formed by far-right hooligans.