Brexit party leader Farage feels enormous sense of achievement

The leader of the Brexit party Nigel Farage said he felt an enormous sense of achievement for Britain's impending exit from the European Union.

Farage said Tuesday he had been deemed a "nut case" for years for telling his European Parliament colleagues that Britain would leave the bloc.

"Everyone thought it was hilarious, like I was some sort of nut case who had sort of descended from the hills and it's happened, so politically I feel an enormous sense of achievement," Farage who spent some 30 years as an MEP, added.

He said that on a personal level he would miss the "theatre inside the chamber" where he had been "the pantomime villain", and he would also miss Strasbourg but stressed he couldn't be happier on a poltical level.

He argued, however, that a lot remained to achieve in Brexit negotiations and cautioned that Britain's departure would trigger different debates on EU membership in other countries. "I actually think the Brexit will lead to a different kind of Europe from the one that we've got today," he said.

The Conservatives won a substantial parliamentary majority in Britain's December 12 election, giving Prime Minister Boris Johnson the power to end more than three years of wrangling over Brexit and take the U.K. out of the EU on January 31.

It will be the first nation to ever leave the bloc, which currently has 28 members.

Britain's departure will be followed by a transition period in which the U.K.-EU relationship will remain largely unchanged while the two sides negotiate a new trade arrangement.

Johnson says the UK is seeking a wide-ranging free trade deal, but doesn't want to agree to keep all EU rules and standards.