Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has said he realised he had been given a ‘purpose’ when he survived a plane crash during campaigning in the general election in 2010.
The Brexiteer was speaking after receiving an honorary doctorate from a fundamentalist Christian university that teaches against same-sex relationships.
The British politician had jetted over to Liberty University in Virginia, an institution that requires all students to sign a statement promising not to have gay sex, or sex with a transgender person, and where the president of the university even claims to have found a gay “cure”.
In a presentation on stage before receiving the doctorate the audience were told that they “tried to kill him once”, referencing a plane crash where a UKIP banner got caught up in a two-seater light aircraft.
He was interviewed by the university’s vice-president for a podcast at the university afterwards, with Farage being asked about the incident.
He said: “How on earth I survived I will never know.”
When the interviewer suggested it was “God’s providence and protection” in response, Farage replied: “I’m alive and he (the pilot, who survived the crash, but died in 2013) is not and I did think after I survived that perhaps, just perhaps, I was put here for a purpose.”
Farage claimed that consequently any abuse or criticism he receives did not bother him.
“I climbed out of the wreckage of a light airplane crash, none of this stuff means anything to me.”
He joked that being hit by a milkshake by comparison “is nothing”.
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