Nigel Farage calls Malcolm Turnbull a ‘snake and a fake’

Nigel Farage has labelled Malcolm Turnbull a snake as he celebrated Australia and Britain’s shift from “trendy, metro” leaders to real conservative leaders.

Introduced as “quite possibly” the next British prime minister, the Eurosceptic and right-wing figure on Saturday addressed a crowd of about 500 at the Conservative Political Action Conference Australia in Sydney.

Mr Farage told the adoring crowd prime minister Scott Morrison’s election victory in May seemed impossible, after the recent hijacking of the Liberal party by “the other side”.

“Malcolm Turnbull ... pretended to be a conservative but actually turned out to be a snake,” he said, to applause.

“You’ve now got someone conservative, mainstream media (and) those in the middle of Melbourne and Sydney may not like him,” he said of Mr Morrison.

“But out where real people live, they voted for him.”

He said he had thought “the greenies had taken over this country“, especially after heading to Melbourne and having 600 people rally against him.

The UK member of the European Parliament for the past two decades was a crucial figure in the 2016 Brexit referendum’s Leave campaign.

He now leads the newly-established Brexit party, which unexpectedly won the most UK seats of any party in the European Parliament election in May.

Mr Farage said the right-wing revolt was moving across the West, against parties that said they were conservative but run by leaders who were nothing of the kind.

“(Former conservative UK prime minister) David Cameron was someone who was not conservative at all but a part of the trendy, metro, liberal elite masquerading as a conservative.”

Mr Farage, who wants a no-deal Brexit, said he wanted the UK free of Europe so it could re-engage with its real friends in the world.

“Australia is right up there at the top of my personal list,” he said.

He said he wanted a complete rebalancing of where Britain was in the world, an increased engagement with Commonwealth countries and fewer people forced into universities.