Nigel Farage tweeted that “Britain is broken” – and Twitter had a pretty much unanimous reaction.
Regular life in the UK has come to a halt throughout much of December due to consecutive strikes from public sector workers (including the first ever walkout from NHS nurses).
Many employees are calling for pay rises as the country is on the edge of a recession with inflation at a 40-year-high of 10.7% and a cost of living crisis.
While the government has blamed the pandemic and the war in Ukraine for soaring energy bills, more and more members of the public are pointing to Brexit instead.
And Farage was one of the driving forces behind our exit from the EU – only this week, think tank Centre for European Reform found that the government has lost £40 billion in tax revenues in just the last two years alone.
The Office for Budget Responsibility also claimed earlier this year that Brexit will shrink the UK economy by around £100 billion between 2016 and 2031.
YouGov polls have revealed that the number of voters who now think that leaving the EU was a bad idea has grown to its largest number yet, reaching over 50%.
For many, Brexit is synonymous with Farage himself.
Long before the EU referendum vote, Farage was working as a UKIP MEP but voiced eurosceptic concerns all the while.
Once the UK narrowly voted to leave, he set up a new political party (the Brexit Party) to pressure the government into a harder deal with the EU.
Farage has also argued in favour of a British independence day to honour crashing out of the EU, and is known for touring parts of the country in a Brexit bus back in 2019.
So, when he tweeted that “Britain is broken”, Twitter thought ti was pretty rich in irony – and the claws came out.