Nigel Farage's employer has been forced to issue a retraction on his behalf after the politician claimed that the UK has no legal obligations to the EU after 2020.



The former UKIP leader used his nightly radio show on the London-based talk station LBC to hold up a piece of paper that he said was evidence that Article 50 – the rule which enables the UK to leave the EU – contained a clause meaning Britain will have no financial obligations to the EU after 2020.

Farage claimed Article 50 said "the rights and obligations deriving from the Treaties would therefore extinguish" when a country leaves the EU.



In reality no such clause exists and Farage's sentence, printed on a piece of A4 paper, was a partial quote taken out of context from explanatory documents for MEPs that are not part of official EU law.

Farage also missed out the second part of the sentence, which made it clear the rights and obligations would only cease to exist "to the extent agreed between the EU and the withdrawing state".

The extent of Britain's financial commitment to the EU budget post-Brexit is a major concern of the UK government, with a realistic prospect that Britain will continue to pay towards some part of the EU budget even after the UK leaves the institution in March 2019.

Farage's false claim was then written up as a news story on LBC's own website under the headline "Nigel Farage's Proof That Britain Has No EU Obligations After 2020" and tweeted from the main LBC account.



Its publication was followed by online criticism after the headline was changed to "Nigel Farage Claims He Has Proof That Britain Has No EU Obligations After 2020" – featuring a critical tweet from the legal writer David Allen Green.