Nigel Farage launched a scathing attack on the EU, urging the UK to leave on no deal terms and gain “independence”. Mr Farage also claimed a no deal Brexit would allow the UK to “make its own laws, have its own courts and control its own borders”. Referring to whether he would prefer no deal, Mr Farage told 60 Minutes Australia: “Would I be happier with independence? Because that is what it is. We would be a self-governing country, we would make our own laws, have our own courts, control our own borders, decide who could come and live in our country.

“We would be like Australia, we would be like a normal country. That’s what I want. We are a global nation, even with the impositions of the European Union.

“Freed from those shackles we can be so much better off.”

On whether Brexit has been “worth it”, Mr Farage said: “Yes because the genie is out of the bottle. The public appetite to get back the independence and self-governance of this nation, it’s out.

“It isn’t going back into the bottle. We will get this. What history will show looking back on this in 100 years time, is that like all great changes, they were not easy.

We are a global nation, even with the impositions of the European Union

Nigel Farage

“Because you always have the tyranny of the status quo. You always have those with power and with money who do not want any change at all. But in the end, we are going to get there.”

The comments come as the UK may be forced to take part in the European elections in May, as there is not much time to pass the legislation through Parliament – and Remainers may try to obstruct it to delay Brexit, a former Downing Street legislation chief has warned.

Nikki da Costa said it was “possible” for the draft withdrawal agreement bill to be passed quickly but she doesn’t think it would happen by May 22.

She said: “When the Government says ‘if MPs vote for the deal’ they have actually specified further that that means actually passing the legislation associated with that.

“If the Government decide to wait until after the local elections which seems likely so you would start on Monday, the 6th, then you have only got two weeks to pass it – at the outside you might have four weeks to do this.

“It is going to be extraordinarily tight and that is going to require not only having a majority for whatever is being proposed but a majority to also say ‘let’s go at that pace and we are just as motivated as the Government is to avoid those European elections’.

“There’s a lot of variables there and I think it is less likely that that actually is going to happen.”

Ms da Costa said the bill was not “simple” and represented “serious constitutional legislation” with controversial elements.

“There are quite difficult things in there and the question becomes if MPs have come to an agreement on this, are they equally happy to see that legislation go through fast and then… are the peers happy for it to go through at that pace?

“Everyone is going to have to basically agree that they would do every stage of the bill back to back and really truncate the amount of time for scrutiny of the legislation.”

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