British European lawmaker says goodbye to EU, he hopes

BRUSSELS – A top British anti-European Union campaigner has made what he hopes will be his last speech to the European Parliament, two weeks before a referendum on whether Britain should leave the bloc.

UK Independence Party leader and EU lawmaker Nigel Farage said Wednesday he hopes “we are going to leave this Union on 23 June.”

Farage told EU lawmakers that he hopes the vote “brings an end to this project and in a few years’ time we can be sovereign, democratic nation states that work and trade together.”

Amid applause and some cheers, much of it ironic, Farage repeated the celebrated last words of gangrene stricken South Pole explorer Captain Lawrence Oates on leaving his tent in a blizzard: “I’m going out now. I may be some time.”