Russia, Boris ‘out to kill EU’

Toxic combination of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, the far right and Russia will destroy the EU, chief Brexit negotiator says.

Boris Johnson is as much a threat to the EU as Vladimir Putin and Marine le Pen, Europe’s chief negotiator warns. Picture: AFP.

The toxic combination of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, populism, the rise of the far right and Russia will destroy the EU, the chief ­Brexit co-ordinator in Brussels says.

Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister who leads Brexit talks for the European Parliament, compared Britain’s former foreign minister Mr Johnson with Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, warning that they both represented a “huge” threat.

Mr Verhofstadt, who leads a pan-European bloc of liberal members of the European Parliament allied to President Emman­uel Macron of France, said EU elections this week were being ­manipulated by Russia in the same way as the Brexit referendum.

“It is always Russia. Talk about Farage, it’s Russia. On top of that you have a hard-Brexiteer who wants to become leader of the Conservative Party. Am I too suspicious? I see a real organised ­attempt to destroy the European project as a whole,” he said.

“My sense of Brexit is it is an ­element of a more global picture. I think that everybody agrees that the Brexit discussion was manipulated. Are we not now living and seeing the same thing but on a ­European level? It is not a referendum, it is a European election, but it is the same dynamic. It is the same attack that was against Britain in the EU and now is about the EU itself.”

Britons go to the polls for European elections early tomorrow (AEST), followed by most other countries at the weekend. The elections are expected to bring months of chaos in Brussels after significant gains for nationalist, far-right and populist parties.

More than 400 million people are entitled to vote for members of the European Parliament, including 73 British MEPs who will have full say in choosing a new European Commission and the successor to president Jean-Claude Juncker.

Mr Verhofstadt said that unless European leaders could halt the trend for populism, the EU would be destroyed in a Russian-backed nationalist takeover in elections in 2024. Mr Macron’s La Republique En Marche party is polling behind Ms Le Pen’s National Rally and victories loom for populists in the The Netherlands, Italy and Britain.

“What the Boris Johnsons, the Farages, the Le Pens and the ­others represent is huge,” he said. “It cannot be business as usual. If European politicians don’t show direction for the future, then we will fall massively back into ­nationalism, populism, Euroscepticism. If there are not Europeans who can transcend with a vision of a new EU, then if it is not in 2019 it will be in 2024 that they take over the EU and destroy it.”

Mr Verhofstadt pointed to this week’s corruption scandal in Austria after Chancellor Sebastian Kurz was forced to sack coalition partner Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the far-right Freedom party. A video had emerged of Mr Strache offering to exchange public sector construction contracts for the support of a fake Russian donor.

Last year it emerged that Ms Le Pen received Russian bank loans worth millions of euros. Matteo Salvini, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Northern League, has been accused of financial links to Russia via energy contracts.

Mr Farage is to be investigated by the EU over whether he broke rules by not declaring £450,000 of expenses in kind received from pro-Brexit businessman Arron Banks in 2016.

Mr Verhofstadt said that there were “open questions” about Mr Farage because of his links to Mr Banks. “There is conspiracy of all the radical right-wing nationalists everywhere, apparently with the help of the Kremlin, or of oligarchs round the Kremlin, to disrupt this union,” he said.

Mr Verhofstadt accused Mr Farage of secretly hoping that Britain’s decision to leave the bloc is reversed. “I think what Farage hoped and planned for is exactly what is happening now,” he said.

“He is using Brexit and hopes it doesn’t happen. Then he can create a Brexit party and create himself as the most important figure on the Right.’’

Mr Verhofstadt campaigned in London last week, and urged Britons to back the “true party of ­Remain”. “It will be a sign from Britain to the rest of the world, ­especially to Europe, not to fall into the populist trap,’’ he said.

The Times