As Britain awoke on Friday to the news that it had voted in favor of withdrawing from the European Union, voters were introduced to their new reality with a stunning admission from Nigel Farage, the pro-Brexit advocate who leads the U.K. Independence Party. Farage said that the Vote Leave campaign’s signature pledge—that leaving the European Union would allow for £350 million to be spent on the U.K.’s National Health Service—was a “mistake.”
Farage’s mea culpa was made during an appearance on Good Morning Britain, where he was asked if he could continue supporting that promise after the campaign to extract the United Kingdom from the European Union had succeeded.
“No I can’t, and I would have never made that claim,” Farage said. “It was one of the mistakes I think the ‘leave’ campaign made”
WATCH: @Nigel_Farage tells @susannareid100 it was a ‘mistake’ for Leave to claim there’d be £350M a week for NHShttps://t.co/JNkl5k8IlK
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) June 24, 2016
When pressed by Good Morning Britain’s Susanna Reid, who said that 17 million people had voted to leave the EU partly on that bold promise, Farage repeatedly stalled, as he attempted to disavow the campaign pledge.
“Do you think there are other things that people will wake up this morning and find out aren’t going to happen?” Reid asked.
