Nigel farage

He’s gone, now he’s back. After four days in the political wilderness, Nigel Farage has returned as leader of Ukip. In a slightly bizarre statement, the party’s chairman Steve Crowther said Farage was ‘persuaded by the NEC to withdraw his resignation and remains leader of Ukip.’ So what changed his mind, after promising to resign ‘within 10 minutes’ of defeat? Speaking to those with a knowledge of the situation, I understand that Farage was genuinely ready to give up the position and the result in South Thanet came as a relief. His campaign team believe they did everything possible to get him elected but it clearly wasn’t enough — or the limits of ‘Farageism’ have been

Yes, yes, I know it’s supposed to be ‘unfair’ that Ukip ended up with only one MP while securing 13 per cent of the popular vote. But that’s first-past-the-post for you. You have to win a seat to get into Parliament. The British electorate was offered the chance to to ditch FPTP back in 2011 and said, nope, we’ll keep the unfair system. As for Ukip coming second and third in all those Labour seats, it’s impressive but I suspect not terribly significant. White northern working-class voters were protesting against the fact that none of the major parties gave a toss about the destruction of their communities by the merciless progress of

Forget Vince Cable. Forget, if you can, Ed Balls (and I know that’s hard, because what a joyous result that was). Expel from your mind the image of Nick Clegg crying into his cornflakes this morning while texting his old pals in the Euro-oligarchy to see if they will give him a new plush job that involves no contact with pesky plebs. For last night there was an even bigger loser than those guys. Russell Brand. Or ‘Rusty Rockets’, as his politics-packed Twitterfeed has it. Rusty being the operative word, for now we know that the much-hyped ability of slebs like Brand to sway public sentiment is in a serious

Whoever comes top on Thursday, Labour has won the only poll that really matters – that of Britain’s beloved celebrities, with recent endorsements by Steve Coogan, Delia Smith, Robert Webb, Ronnie O’Sullivan and Jo Brand, among others. The Tories in contrast can only muster a few self-made businesswomen and Peter Stringfellow. https://twitter.com/PJStringfellow/status/595577294355238915 Labour’s most important conquest, however, has to be comedian-turned-people’s poet Russell Brand, who previously suggested that voting was a waste of time, but now backs Ed Miliband. When it comes to this 21st-century political colossus, no one can better Rod Liddle’s words from a few months ago: ‘That’s why I enjoy my mornings in bed with Russell. It’s like

Ukip has four key target seats in Essex and Kent it hopes to win on Thursday. In order of likelihood of victory, Clacton, Rochester & Strood, South Thanet and Thurrock are the constituencies to watch on election night. I visited three of these seats yesterday, to find out how each of the candidates are feeling about the impending election, as well as their predictions of how well Ukip will do. 1. South Thanet Ukip candidate: Nigel Farage Last Ashcroft poll: Ukip two points behind Tories WATCH: Highlights from @Nigel_Farage’s final public meeting of the campaign in South Thanet #ge2015 #ukip https://t.co/sIRqo4PtKg — Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) May 2, 2015 Nigel Farage held his

Ukip is becoming a two-faced party. One side is made up of credible political challengers, while the other side comprises LibLabCon conspiracy theorists. Since the last election, the party has made progress by promoting this serious side, while sidelining the fruitcakes. But over the last few days, the more loony side of the party has reappeared, thanks to the party making the BBC a campaign issue. While out campaigning in Aylesbury yesterday, Nigel Farage said he had no complaints about the other broadcasters — just the Beeb: ‘We have this bizarre state of affairs where we have BBC, an organisation which we are all charged £145 a year to have the benefit of seeing, aren’t

Tonight’s ‘Question Time’-style TV debates will be followed by what has become probably the most hated aspect of this rather uninspiring general election campaign: the spin room. This spectacle of journalists interviewing journalists as they listen to frontbenchers from all the parties parroting lines about how their leader was the best (or, in the Tory case, how well Nicola Sturgeon has been doing) is odd enough inside the room, let alone for those watching at home. The way the politicians spinning talk is even less natural than usual: it’s like a Westminster version of Made In Chelsea, stuffed with people acting at being actors. And yet there is a reason

Will there be a Portillo moment on election night with any of the party leaders? Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage are two most likely leaders to lose and Lord Ashcroft has polled Sheffield Hallam and South Thanet to find out how safe the Lib Dem and Ukip leaders are. As the chart above shows, Farage and Clegg are still in very tight races. In Sheffield Hallam, Labour is now just one point ahead of the Lib Dems — compared to a three point lead in November last year. In South Thanet, Ashcroft puts Ukip two points behind the Tories, compared to a one point lead in November 2014. Although the

The Ukip fox may have entered the Westminster henhouse but how many more chickens will it kill? ComRes has released a new poll revealing that Ukip is trailing in third place in ‘ten Conservative-held seats which Ukip have targeted’. Across the polled seats, the Tories are on 39 per cent, Labour on 28 and Ukip trailing on 21. While the latter party’s vote share has increased by 15 per cent since 2010, ComRes’s findings suggests they will struggle to win thanks to the collapse in the Liberal Democrat vote. According to the poll, a quarter of Lib Dem voters in these seats say they will now back Labour and 21 per

Nigel Farage may see himself as the quintessential British politician, but is he modelling himself on a national comedy treasure? Mr S’s colleague Sebastian Payne noted that in Lord Ashcroft’s latest focus groups, voters reckoned that the Ukip leader ‘would only watch British comedies’ in his spare time, such as Only Fools And Horses. One respondent even said ‘he models himself on Boycie’. Judge for yourself: But Boycie is not happy with the comparison. John Challis, who plays Boycie in the series, told SunNation ‘Farage sounds nothing like me; he’s going to have to try harder.’ But Challias did find one similarity. ‘I noticed he wears a warm, British coat

Nigel Farage tends to stick to one line on foreign affairs: no more foreign wars. On the Sunday Politics today, the Ukip leader claimed that the migrant crisis and tragedies in the Mediterranean are the fault of countries such as Britain and France who bombed Libya in 2011: ‘Actually, it was the European response that caused this problem in the first place — the fanaticism of Sarkozy and Cameron to bomb Libya and what they’ve done is to completely destabilize Libya; to turn it into a country with much savagery; to turn it into a place where for Christians the situation is now virtually impossible and we ought to be honest and say