Nigel Farage - Britain and EU are Being Like an Old Married Couple

UKIP leader Nigel Farage on debate at Oxford drew laughter from the audience when he compared the UK and EU’s relationship to that of a loveless marriage. 'Britain and European Union got in love, got married in their late teens until things went wrong.' Oxford Union, 23. November, 2015. Source: OxfordUnion YouTube channel. Watch full debate here.

Transcript:

I think tonight is a moment perhaps to examine that relationship between Britain and the European Union. I want you please to think of Britain and the EU being like an old married couple. They fell in love and got married in their late teens. Forty years they’ve been together. In the early days it was pretty good, but it’s been getting increasingly rotten over the last 25 years. Of course a lot of people said: 'No, no, no, you must stay with him. Oh, I know he’s a terrible bully! I know he makes all the rules and the laws in the house! I know he forbids you from making your own friends but surely it’s better that you stay together?' And some who perhaps tended towards her side, they vexed themselves with the question: ‘Could she cope on her own? Was she really up to it? Could she manage her own shopping basket and run her own life?’ And this debate went on between their friends for years. In the end it was decided, quite sensibly, they should go for marriage guidance counseling. And they went to a great big building in Brussels, and there was a sign outside that said: 'Council of Ministers.' And into this building they went, and on forty different bitter disputes on all forty occasions the court ruled in favor of the husband. She'd lost forty times out of forty and so they did then decide to go for a quick, swift, amicable divorce.

Well, a couple of years have gone by now, and initially things were quite difficult. There were things to do, lots to tidy up, but I could report that now she has blossomed. She has made new friends right across the rest of the world. She's got her own self confidence back, and she is in charge of her own life, making her own choices for good or bad, which is as it should be for any individual or for any nation. And that folks is our relationship with European Union. It is now a terrible, terrible drag for this country. This baloney we heard about Britain not being big enough to negotiate its own trade deals on the world stage. How on Earth, we were asked by Nick Clegg, how on Earth are we big enough to go and negotiate with China or India or anybody else? Well, unless you hadn't noticed, two years ago Iceland with a population of 317,000 negotiated their own bilateral free trade deal with China. I put it to you folks that if Iceland is big enough to make its own trade deals the United Kingdom is big enough to make its own trade deals.