Nigel farage

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 many - regardless of career or any financial rewards. Well, now he has resigned from Ukip, and I have decided to follow his example.

Thankfully, many in Europe - not least the European Parliament - will have stopped listening to Nigel Farage a long time ago. The Ukip leader, no stranger to attempting to infuriate his MEP colleagues, has been winding them up again. In this morning's session, he gloated: ‘You all laughed at me. Well, I have to say, you’re not laughing now, are you?’ But Farage didn't stop there, telling those around him: ‘I know that virtually none of you have ever done a proper job in your lives, or worked in business, or worked in trade, or ever created a job, but listen’ It was clear from the huge smile across Farage’s face during the proceedings that he was having a whale of the time mocking his fellow MEPs.

The Tory leaders of Vote Leave, those supposedly civilised and intelligent men, are creating the conditions for a mass far-right movement in England. They have lined up the ingredients like a poisoner mixing a potion, and I can almost feel the convulsion that will follow. They have treated the electorate like children. They pretended that they could cut or even stop immigration from the EU and have a growing economy too. No hard choices, they said. No costs or trade-offs. Now the Tory wing of the Brexit campaign, the friends of the City and big business, insists that we should remain part of the single market. So should you, if your job depends on Britain continuing to have access to EU markets, or you do not want your taxes to rise and services cut.

At the time of writing, no one knows the result of Britain’s European Union referendum. But everyone has learned in the hardest manner imaginable that Britain has a fascist movement. A real fascist movement, that is. Not what students with incontinent tongues call 'fascism', which turns out to be the beliefs of anyone who disagrees with them. But actual fascism that legitimises racial hatred, conspiracy theory, ethnic cleansing and the assassination of left-wing politicians. Since the murder of Jo Cox we have learned another truth, which ought to be uncontroversial but is everywhere resisted. The far right and the far left are essentially the same. For all their voluble differences, for all that they claim to oppose each other, what unites is more important that what divides them.

For someone who has spent his whole life building up to the referendum, Nigel Farage has had a rather patchy campaign. On the one hand, he has performed reasonably well in his TV question time slot, exceeding the expectations of those in the Leave camp who were dismayed that ITV had signed up the Ukip leader to its referendum programme. But on the other, he has unveiled a poster that bears striking similarities to ones used by the Nazis and has been shunned by the official Leave campaign. Today, the Ukip leader gave his final speech of a campaign that he has spent his political life pushing for. At one point, as he brandished a passport, he said ‘this is the last time in this campaign I’m going to do this’. He has finally got here. https://soundcloud.

No, there was never a Golden Age of genteel and elevated discourse. Never a time when the fate of the country didn't seem to hang in the balance or when politics was ever played for anything less than all the marbles. Check old election-day copies of the Daily Mirror if you doubt this. Check the hammers and tongs with which Gladstone and Disraeli set about each other if you doubt this. Check the 1970s, when Britain seemed to be falling apart, or the early 1980s when terrorism and race riots and industrial action scarred the British political and social landscape. Politics is, and always has been, a contact sport and every generation has its low moment. But can we agree this might be ours? It is a reactive moment, nonetheless.

Forget the big EU debates, the most important face-off ahead of polling day is playing out on the Thames right now. Nigel Farage has taken to the water today as part of a Brexit flotilla, organised by the Fishing for Leave campaign. The stunt sees Scottish skippers boarding Brexit boats as they make the case for Out. https://twitter.com/kayaburgess/status/743012072976470016 However, not wanting to be outdone, the Remain camp are fighting back with their own attempt at some gentle naval warfare. Bob Geldof is leading the charge today -- sharing an In boat with Rachel Johnson. He has attempted to win over voters by playing Chicago's 'If you leave me now' at full volume from the vessel. Alas Mr S understands that not everyone is so impressed by Geldof's efforts.

There has been much speculation that a Brexit could lead to a number of other countries following suit and leaving the EU. Top of that list is Denmark, with Nigel Farage claiming that the country would be the first to leave in a domino effect triggered by Brexit. Now Denmark's former Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt has waded into the discussion. When asked, at Fortune's Most Powerful Women event in London, whether Denmark would leave the EU if Britain did, Thorning-Schmidt poured cold water on the suggestion.

Anyone with any more corkers in their armoury should take note there’s less than a fortnight left in which to release them. This week did see George Osborne finally challenged on why he and David Cameron keep pretending that a country they have always campaigned to bring into the EU will never in fact come into the EU. Questioned by Andrew Neil about David Cameron’s 2010 speech promising to ‘pave the road from Ankara to Brussels’ George Osborne said: ‘Well I was 16 years old when Turkey first applied to join the European Union, I’m now 45 and I don’t think it’s going to happen in my lifetime because sadly actually over recent years Turkey has gone backwards.

This is an abridged transcript of Nigel Farage's Brexit interview with Andrew Neil IMMIGRATION Reducing the level of immigration has been central to your pitch to voters, can you tell the British public at what level broadly you’d expect net migration to fall if we left the EU? Up to us. The point about this referendum, too much of this is sounding like a manifesto, a Remain manifesto, a Leave manifesto.  The real point about this referendum is who makes the decisions, do we have the ability to control the numbers that come to Britain or not, that’s the first and most important point to make.  What do I think would be the right number?