Nigel Farage has suggested that God may have saved his life when he was involved in a plane crash in 2010.
The Reform UK leader was standing as a Ukip candidate during that year’s general election campaign when the light aircraft he was travelling in fell to the ground.
At the time, Detective Chief Inspector Martin Kinchin of Northamptonshire Police said: “The people inside the plane were lucky to come out with not very serious injuries.”
On ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning, Farage was asked by presenter Richard Madeley about his friend Donald Trump claiming that “divine intervention” saved his life during an assassination attempt in July.
The Clacton MP told him: “I find your line of attacking those who believe that there are sometimes divine interventions, and that there are people out there who believe in God, and sometimes they get spared, I find that line very cynical.
“Do you know something? I was in an aeroplane that crashed into the ground in 2010. I was smashed to pieces. I shouldn’t have survived. I’ve no idea why, but I did, but who knows, maybe even I believe that at times there is a higher intervention that can work in your favour.”
Madeley then pushed back: “I doubt you would say God wants you to be MP for Clacton in the same way that Donald Trump says he thinks God wants him to be president of the United States.”
Farage replied: “Do you know what? British armies for centuries have fought saying ‘God is on our side.’ People need to believe in something.
“And if you were faced with the prospect of walking out of your front door and someone might shoot you every day, because it’s happened twice in the last two months, the fact that he has a religious faith, maybe that’s what is giving him the strength to continue.”
In the same interview, Farage also repeated Trump’s widely-debunked conspiracy theory that immigrants were eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.