Nigel farage

Ukip’s autumn conference kicks off tomorrow in Bournemouth. With the new leader set to be announced, there had been hopes the two-day event would mark the beginning of a new exciting post-Brexit era for the party. Instead, the party faces questions over whether there should be a second chapter at all. Steve Stanbury, Ukip’s former director, has appeared on the Daily Politics today to announce that he has defected to the Tories. In the interview with Jo Coburn, Stanbury said he believed the party’s best days were behind it now it has achieved the ‘principle objective’ of securing — and winning — an EU referendum. He says he hopes his Ukip colleagues will follow suit and ‘come

Last week Donald Trump managed to leave hacks and commentariats confused when he took to Twitter to declare that he would soon be referred to as ‘MR BREXIT!’. While many interpreted this to mean that he would win an election against the odds — just as the Leave vote did in the referendum — Mr S was curious to learn that Trump is set to share a platform with the UK’s very own Mr Brexit. Nigel Farage has told Sky News that he will be appear on stage with Donald Trump in Mississippi tonight to discuss ‘The Brexit Story’. Given that Trump has regulary praised Britain’s decision to leave the EU, no doubt Farage

Most people would say UKIP lends itself to comedy better than Denis Healey’s eyebrows lent themselves to tweezers – but not the people of Walton-on-the-Naze, as they live in the party’s only constituency. I’m a stand-up comic, and I was booked to play the town’s first comedy night this month. I don’t know if the lovely promoter realised I was Asian when he booked me; for my part, I didn’t realise Douglas Carswell was Walton’s MP, and only discovered while Googling the town on the way to the gig, when it was too late to turn back. When I arrived in Walton-on-the-Naze’s large ballroom with its cornicing and chandeliers (‘It

After Nigel Farage achieved his aim of taking Britain out of the EU, he announced that he would be stepping down as leader of Ukip. However, with the subsequent leadership race since facing several setbacks — with Steven Woolfe ruled ineligible and Bill Etheridge now caught up in a viagra row — many kippers are already missing the days of Farage. While Farage has promised to stay closely involved with his party, could he be planning a German getaway? Mr S only asks after Farage — whose wife Kirsten Mehr is German — was apparently spotted in the queue at the German embassy yesterday: Given that Farage is a man known for his dislike of the EU, his

Now that Nigel Farage is stepping away from frontline politics, he has more time to focus on his family, television career and… appearance. In an interview for Russia Today (natch) with Sam Delaney, Farage has unveiled his new facial hair. With the look so far receiving a mixed reception online — with some likening it to that of an American daytime television host — Mr S welcomes your caption suggestions. The winner will be announced on Monday. Update: … and the winner is K G Barrett for coming up with a solution to Ukip’s troubles in their leadership contest — with the caption: ‘Nigel Farage? I’m sorry, I have never heard of

Steven Woolfe has been barred from standing for Ukip leader. The party’s national executive committee has ruled that he didn’t submit his nomination papers in time and so is ineligible.   Woolfe’s exclusion from the race is a major blow for Ukip donor, and Leave.EU founder, Arron Banks who had thrown his weight behind Woolfe. Woolfe also had the support of several of those closest to Nigel Farage. This group will not take Woolfe’s exclusion lying down, and will try and find a way to stop the contest or somehow get his name onto the ballot. I wouldn’t even rule out a split if the NEC won’t back down; Banks

Ukip’s leadership race has barely begun but the contest has already delivered plenty of drama. The frontrunner Steven Woolfe missed out on entering his nomination in time after a ‘Computer says no’ moment, and it’s also emerged that Woolfe failed to declare a drink-driving conviction when he ran for office in 2012 – potentially breaching electoral rules. But whilst we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out whether Woolfe actually makes it on to the ballot paper, a number of other candidates are also vying to take over from Nigel Farage: Ukip MEPs Jonathan Arnott and Bill Etheridge and Diane James amongst them. So who will come out on top? In this edition

After the verdict of the referendum had been announced, the most interesting comment was delivered by Nigel Farage. The vote had represented not only a victory against an undemocratic and faceless bureaucracy in Brussels but ‘against the big merchant banks and big businesses’. Worryingly, neither the majority of the Brexiteers nor their Remainer counterparts – at least among the political and journalistic classes – have grasped what the former Ukip leader understood instinctively; that Brexit is in fact a sub-plot in a much larger, overarching narrative: the battle between international finance and the one force that can realistically check its relentless and apocalyptic march – the nation state. Understand this and

Nigel Farage is here in Cleveland at the Republican Convention. He’s enjoying himself, and why not? Britain has voted for Brexit, and he doesn’t have a party to run. He can bask. Today he had lunch and a Q&A session with some fellow-minded conservatives on the Old River Road. They were all pleased as punch about Brexit, the Donald Trump thing, and the rise of anti-elite populism everywhere. ‘It looks like the perfect storm,’ Farage said, just before he sat down to eat. He was speaking to Steven King, a Republican congressman who recently got into hot water after he questioned the contribution non-white people had made to American history. The two men discussed the beauty of

Andrea Leadsom’s decision to drop out of the leadership race — and by default make Theresa May the party’s new leader — has been met with a collective sigh of relief by the majority of Conservative MPs. However, for the same reason that many were worried by Leadsom’s appeal to grassroots Tories, they ought too to be worried about the opportunity her departure presents to their opponents. In the course of the — short-lived — leadership contest, Leadsom established herself as the Brexit purist, winning nominations from MPs on the right of the party. She also won the backing of leading figures in Ukip with both Arron Banks’s Leave.EU and Nigel Farage endorsing her. Over the weekend,

On the morning of the Referendum vote, I texted Nigel Farage – as the Heritage and Tourism spokesman of his party –  to say he ‘had fought a hard battle and deserved to win’. He texted back: ‘One dares to hope’. Like most of the best English people I know Nigel has a strong sense of loyalty and decency and also loves a drink. He doesn’t take himself – or politics –  that seriously. Like Jimmy Goldsmith he gave up a business career to fight his cause. He only pursued his convictions so hard because he believed in leaving the autocratic and anti-sovereign EU  – and risking the opprobrium of