Nigel farage

I don’t know if ‘Leave’ supporters will win. With the young abstaining and the old voting in a low-turnout referendum, it is just about possible that they could. But it is already dismally clear how they will react if they lose: they won’t accept the result. Nigel Farage was proud to admit that he would be a bad loser. ‘In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way,’ he told the Mirror. ‘If the Remain campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it.’ The old-fashioned among you might have thought that in any electoral contest the side with the most votes wins. How out of touch

As Nigel Farage come to terms with his old foe Neil Hamilton’s success in the Welsh elections, there is another new Welsh Ukip Assembly Member who could also prove problematic for party harmony. Earlier this year, Ukip candidate Gareth Bennett made the news after he blamed increased litter in Cardiff on eastern European migrants. He then appeared on Daily Politics where he admitted that he had no evidence to back up the claim: ‘where would I have gleaned the evidence for? Where is this data kept?’. While Mr S understands that Ukip’s high command were less than pleased with the interview, Bennett threatened to sue his own party for loss of earnings if

Last week Vote Leave’s Dom Cummings was hauled before the Treasury Select Committee to be grilled on the Brexit campaign by a po-faced Andrew Tyrie. What followed was a lively exchange between Cummings and the committee chair as Tyrie tried to pin Cummings down on figures used in Vote Leave’s campaign literature. Today Cummings’s comrade Matthew Elliott was supposed to sit before the committee but the Vote Leave chief exec was once again unable to make it. Instead Arron Banks — of the rival group Leave.EU — is answering questions from the committee on the Brexit campaign. With little love lost between Banks’s Leave.EU and Vote Leave — which won the official

It was the largest debate in The Spectator’s history: we sold out the 2,200-seat London Palladium for our debate on whether Britain should leave the EU, sponsored by Rathbones. The lineup: Dan Hannan, Nigel Farage and Kate Hoey vs Nick Clegg, Liz Kendall and Chuka Umunna. Andrew Neil chaired. Here are summaries of all the speeches, as well as the full audio: Daniel Hannan for Out. https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/daniel-hannans-speech-in-spectator-brexit-debate Tonight, I’m inviting you to make me redundant – and, into the bargain, make Nigel redundant. And I wouldn’t be doing if I were not confident that there will be plenty of openings for newly-unemployed MEPs in the boom that would follow our exit from the European Union. Why do

To the Conrad hotel in St James where Nigel Farage went head to head with former Labour spinner John McTernan in a Ladbrokes’ Brexit debate. Although the EU was the number one topic on the agenda, the panel chair Isabel Oakeshott — who is the co-author of Call Me Dave — managed to get pig on the menu as she recalled an email McTernan had sent about a journalist — during his time advising Julia Gillard in Australia: ‘This was an order as to how this journalist was to be treated: dead — not ever, no transcripts, no returned calls, dead, forever — that’s an order.’ She said that the email summed

Although the Out campaign has gained momentum since Michael Gove and Boris Johnson backed Brexit, there are still concerns that the campaign is yet to find a leader. However, could their prayers be about to be answered? Step forward David Icke. Yes, the Corbyn-loving purple-tracksuit-wearing-lizard-conspiracist has plumped for Out, with a series of eye-catching pieces of clip art: https://twitter.com/davidicke/status/701347887452585985 https://twitter.com/davidicke/status/701361728567664640 https://twitter.com/davidicke/status/701462141044260864 https://twitter.com/davidicke/status/701471206742970368 Mr S suspects that the support of the new age conspiracist will only add to worries that the Out campaign is proving to be too divisive.

It’s been a long night in Brussels and it’s going to be a hard day ahead for David Cameron as he tries to strike a deal with other European leaders at the EU summit. The Prime Minister has now arrived and said he will ‘do everything he can’. He added that ‘some progress’ had been made but there was still no deal: It looked earlier in the day as though Greece could veto the entire summit over the issue of migration. Polish Minister for European Affairs, Konrad Szymański, said it was a serious issue but maintained that he was confident it would be sorted: French President Francois Hollande said this

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/putinsendgameinsyria/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Charles Grant from the Centre for European Reform discuss the EU referendum battle” startat=743] Listen [/audioplayer] On the day that David Cameron delivered his Bloomberg speech, the 2013 address in which he committed himself to a referendum on Britain’s EU membership, I asked a close ally of his how he would avoid splitting the Tory party over the issue, given that even quiet ‘outers’ might feel obliged to vote to leave. The ally paused before replying: ‘That would be a good problem to have, as it would mean we had won the election.’ That ‘good problem’ is now here. The Tory leadership is currently involved

If all goes according to David Cameron’s plan, then the EU referendum campaign will be under way very shortly. Cameron himself will be the main figure on the In side of the argument. The Home Secretary Theresa May will also throw herself into the campaign, as Rachel Sylvester wrote this week. Another face of the effort to keep Britain in the EU will be Alan Johnson, the former Home Secretary, who is running the Labour IN campaign. The Remain side of the argument will, as the above list shows, be able to call upon a formidable amount of political firepower. But what is not yet clear is what kind of

With Parliament in recess, David Cameron is able to use this week to focus on the upcoming EU referendum. To do this, the Prime Minister was scheduled to visit Brussels tomorrow morning where he would appear at the EU Conference of Presidents. Alas it appears that Cameron has now had a change of heart about the event which would have seen him come face to face with his old foe Nigel Farage. The Ukip leader says that although he received official documentation confirming he would meet Cameron at tomorrow’s event, he has now heard that Cameron may not attend: https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/699212961068535808 https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/699225438137290752 While an EU Parliament spokesman says that Cameron is unable to

Here is a thought for all those Tory MPs calculating their personal advantage in the forthcoming EU referendum: unless the vote is an absolutely overwhelming Remain, the next leader of the Conservative party — whose day is no longer so far off — will come from the Leave camp. This will happen, obviously, if Leave wins, but also if Leave loses but does well, because most party supporters will only back someone who feels their pain and can reconcile them afterwards. Another thought: why would Nigel Farage want Britain to vote Leave? Then he would be redundant. Study him in the light of this thought and you will see that it explains