‘Brexit badboy’ Andy Wigmore among Brit tourists who fled Switzerland to avoid Covid quarantine & boasts he ‘ran for it’

‘BREXIT badboy’ Andy Wigmore was among hundreds of Brits who fled Switzerland to avoid a Christmas quarantine.

Ex-diplomat Wigmore, 54, boasted he “ran for it” to France before quarantine came into effect on December 22.

The Brexiteer spokesman for Leave.EU campaign co-founder Arron Banks was staying at the Wengen ski resort with his family before the last-minute dash.

They made it to France 20 minutes before the Covid quarantine was introduced.

It came after hundreds of Brit tourists fled another luxury Swiss ski resort under the cover of darkness after being forced into Covid quarantine.

Authorities in Verbier had announced all arrivals from the UK would have to isolate due to the mutant strain of the virus.

‘VON TRAPP FAMILY’

Swiss authorities had messaged to say quarantine was being imposed from December 22.

Mr Wigmore told MailOnline: “We were like the Von Trapp family from The Sound of Music, we made it over the mountains to freedom.

“There were police stopping everyone and asking them if they were British.

“We were among a number of Brits who made it out.”

Authorities in Switzerland had warned Wigmore not to leave his room or residence and to avoid all contact.

Anyone breaking the quarantine could be hit with a £8,324 fine.

But in an Instagram post, the Brexit campaign leader boasted that he had “decided to make a run for it” in a last-minute dash.

They travelled by train from Basel to Paris and arrived in London on December 23 on the Eurostar. 

He told MailOnline he was contacted several times by Swiss authorities as they tried to track him down.

He finally told officials in Switzerland that he was back in England.

He added: “The message was pretty ominous. If we had not got out when we did we would have missed Christmas.”

Meanwhile, authorities in Verbier had announced all arrivals from Britain would have to isolate to avoid the new strain of the virus spreading.

Brits had been pouring into Switzerland in the run up to Christmas but a surge in cases the new strain led to a scramble to find around 10,000 skiers.

Verbier said on 21 December that all people who had arrived from the UK since December 14 would need to self-isolate for 10 days from their date of arrival.

But the measures led to 200 of the 420 or so “angry” Brits forced to isolate sneaking out of the town rather than stay cooped up in cramped hotel rooms, SonntagsZeitung newspaper reported.

“Many of them stayed in quarantine for a day before they set off unnoticed under the cover of darkness,” Jean-Marc Sandoz, spokesman for the wider Bagnes municipality, told SZ.

Sandoz said they managed to get out of their hotels in the town unnoticed.   

“It was when they saw the meal trays remained untouched that the hoteliers noticed that the customers had gone,” he told the ATS news agency.

“We can’t blame them. In most cases, quarantine was untenable. Imagine four people staying in a hotel room of 20 square metres.”

He added that the tourists left feeling “a little angry with Switzerland” and with the sense of having been “trapped”.