Nigel Farage, on behalf of the EFDD Group. – Mr President, I think under Rule 164 of our revered procedures I am allowed to respond to the comments you made as President of Parliament, some of them personally insulting. Maybe you have a bit of a problem with your temper. I will ignore the personal comments you made about me, but I will say this: we do seem this morning to be struggling just a little bit with our history. To claim, Mr Tajani, that the European Union brought about the downfall of Nazism and Soviet Communism isn’t only laughable, it is very ungracious and deeply insulting to the United States of America, which made massive sacrifices so that Europe could be free twice in the 20th century, and – to a slightly lesser extent – the United Kingdom, as 30 000 British dead in Italy will attest. So you can claim what you want for the European Union, but please do not rewrite history.

Mr Tusk, I want to thank you for confirming that it was Theresa May who asked for the one—year extension to the transition period. I also want to thank you for your recent offer, saying that if Britain wants a Canada Plus—style trade deal, you are open to it. Indeed, it’s what I have campaigned for, for 25 years. I’ve always thought this was a better approach between our country and the EU than the one we currently have.

Now every proposal of course seems to founder on the question of the Irish border, but given the slight state of panic that German industry is now getting itself into – and maybe that’s not surprising because a WTO deal would lead not just to tariffs on German cars, but a weaker pound and probably a more competitive UK economy – the time has come to look for answers. The funny thing is the answers are staring at us. Not so long ago, Mr Juncker in the Irish Parliament made it very clear that there were no circumstances under which the European Union would impose a border. Indeed, even Mr Varadkar, the Irish PM, who is not usually particularly helpful in the Brexit process, has said that under no circumstances will there be a hard border. This Parliament produced a study by one of its own committees, the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, entitled ‘Avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland for Customs control and the free movement of persons’.

The point is, there are solutions everywhere we look. The idea that somehow this border is an impediment is, frankly, a red herring. The problem, I’m afraid, is that there is a rogue element in these negotiations, a group of people who do not wish to see a solution, who put up an immovable brick wall to stop us from breaking free, and I regret to say that it isn’t your chief negotiator, Monsieur Barnier, but actually the British Civil Service and Olly Robbins’ team. They signed up years ago to the European dream. They’ve been happy to take their orders from Brussels. They are now out to sabotage Brexit. They are indeed the enemy within.

I think that unless the Conservative Party comes to its senses and gets rid of a leader who clearly is being led by the nose, then we will head to the December summit, we will head towards a humiliating sell-out, and we will head towards the United Kingdom being trapped in EU rules for many, many years to come.

(Applause from certain quarters)