The Brexit Party MEP candidate insisted the United Kingdom will need to regain its trading sovereignty after “slip-sliding” into giving away control to the European Union during its membership of the bloc. The international property developer protested claims from CNBC International reporter Steve Sedgwick suggesting his party will still have to accept international trading rules whether the country is out of the EU or not. Mr Sedgwick said: “Ben, you and I are not 19th Century characters – we know there’s no such thing as splendid isolation, as a Britannia rules the waves in an international system.

“You know the world system, you know we are subject to rules whether they are WTO or international trade rules or whether they are bilateral trade deals.

“Whoever we go with, it’s inevitable that the rules of the bigger party will have to be adopted by the smaller party.”

But Mr Habib rejected his suggestion, insisting the United Kingdom must no longer “give up our sovereignty”: “We slip-slided into giving ever-increasing amounts of our sovereignty away.

“I’m a supreme internationalist, I want the United Kingdom to trade not just with Europe but with the world. There’s no reason we shouldn’t have a good trading relationship with Europe.

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“There’s no suggestion from the Brexit Party, or indeed anyone you might term a hard Brexiteer, that we should cease trading with the EU or that we should have unnecessarily high tariffs with the EU.

“It’s the EU that’s making a free trade deal difficult.”

Mr Habib also shared suggested one of the main issues with the conduct of the current European Union is the belief the bloc should bring member states closer together – a belief key figures like European Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker and French President Emmanuel Macron have not shied away from supporting. 

He continued: “Mr Macron wrote a letter a few weeks ago in which he talked about the need for reform in the EU.

“When I saw the title I thought, ‘wow, he actually recognises the need to reform.’ But when you read the letter, what he advocates is a faster and deeper political union.

“That’s the problem.”

The Brexit Party picked up a large number of supporters despite leader Nigel Farage launching their bid to push Brexit forward less than three months ago.

Mr Farage last week insisted his party should be allowed to join negotiations with the British Government and the Labour Party should they succeed in securing a large number of seats in the European Parliament.

Theresa May has seen threats to her leadership pile up since she announced the Brexit deadline set for April 12 after a first delay would be further postponed to October 31 to give her extra time to pacify MPs in support of her controversial withdrawal deal.

But her inability to bring parliamentarians together despite five weeks of cross-party talks with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has heightened the chances of an internal coup to oust her from Number 10.

Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom resigned on Wednesday in protest of Mrs May’s pledge to give MPs a say on whether there should be a second EU referendum.

The Prime Minister announced earlier this week she was softening her position on a new referendum and customs arrangements in a desperate attempt to convince MPs to approve her Brexit deal, after they rejected her previous three attempts.

Ian Lavery, chair of the opposition Labour party, said the resignation showed that “the prime minister’s authority is shot and her time is up”.

Mr Lavery said: ”For the sake of the country, Theresa May needs to go, and we need an immediate general election.”

The Brexit Party is on course to win around 29 of the UK’s 73 seats, which will win them at least one MEP in every voting region apart from Northern Ireland.

Labour is expected to get around 18 seats, while the Conservatives may just get six seats.

Following the latest demands from Conservative MPs for Theresa May to stand down as Prime Minister, she will meet Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the influential 1922 backbench MP committee, on Friday.

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