"They will do their damnedest to sabotage it. They've moved from ‘remain’ to ‘rejoin’. So they want to be called re-joiners. You'd think after the December election they'd be begging for forgiveness. But instead, they want to re-join the EU", Freddy Vachha, a UKIP national campaign manager, said.
The bill overcame resistance from pro-EU elements in both chambers of the British parliament to gain the royal assent last week. This was made possible by the ruling Conservative party's landslide victory in December's election.
The UK is set to formally exit the EU on Friday, triggering an 11-month transition period in which the two will try to negotiate an amicable trade deal. EU officials have cast doubt on whether such a pact is possible within months, despite otherwise optimistic sounds from Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
But Vachha argued that no transitional period would suffice if enough people in the civil service, including many in both chambers of parliament, were determined to "make Brexit fail".
He went on to criticise the recent behaviour of the unelected upper chamber, which he claimed had come to represent a train of political thought out of step with the needs of modern UK politics.
In what was then believed to have the potential to turn into a back and forth clash between the Lords and the Commons, Vacha suggested that the Lords had ultimately capitulated out of fear of a backlash from pro-Brexit lawmakers, who now have a majority of eighty seats — their largest since 1987.