Nigel farage

Almost the whole of the British political class failed to understand that the rise of Ukip after the 2010 general election was not some fringe irrelevance but was in fact likely to have major consequences. Academics Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin were two of a select band of political futurologists who were onto the Ukip advance early. By the time their insightful book Revolt on the Right was published, Ukip had already forced an EU referendum pledge out of David Cameron and the book was therefore read by many dumbfounded Westminster insiders as if it were a crammer for a module that had unaccountably not been covered in the standard

Is Nigel Farage about to rebrand as a tech entrepreneur? Since quitting UK politics, the former Ukip leader has had a varied portfolio when it comes to new work. He has tried out broadcast journalism, Cameo (£75 a pop) and climate activism – as a spokesman for the green finance firm the Dutch Business Group (DGB), which invests in forests in a bid to reduce carbon emissions. Now Mr S understands Farage’s post-Brexit reinvention is about to step up a gear – by entering the world of crypto. Last week, his company DGB acquired a controlling stake in a software development outfit called Statix Artificial Intelligence, with the aim of

How’s this for a terrible confession? There has always been a small part of me that admires Nigel Farage. As a Remainer liberal, it’s hard to admit. I disagree with Farage on many things. And my (partial) admiration doesn’t mean I forgive him for some of the low points of his political career, not least the disgraceful ‘Breaking Point’ poster unveiled in the lead-up to the EU referendum, nor his earlier comments about migrants with HIV. Yet I have a soft spot for outsiders, particularly ones like Farage who beat the odds.  What Farage achieved, all from outside a two-party system pitted against him, is unprecedented in the history of British politics. When you think back to where

He may be leaving the political stage but new figures show Nigel Farage won’t be short of a bob or two. Just hours after announcing his retirement from frontline politics on Saturday night, the former Brexit party leader said he was joining fan video app Cameo — where viewers pay celebrities to record personalised video messages. With 141 members of his ‘fan club’ and a price of £75 per vid, Farage looks set to rake in the takings for his burgeoning media empire under the auspices of Thorn In The Side Ltd. But should his Cameo career take a while to come together, Mr S suspects Farage will do just fine.

He’s gone. Again. Even casual watchers of UK politics will be used to Nigel Farage quitting…and then returning. But this time, he insists it is for real. Except leaving politics does not mean disappearing from public life. ‘I now feel I can do just as much to shift public opinion through media and social media as I can as a campaigning party leader,’ he said in his announcement that he was quitting heading up the Reform Party.  He’s right. And his opponents will once again play into his hands because they will fall back onto the same patterns of caricature and derision as they have throughout Farage’s career. An announcement

Nigel Farage is in some ways a victim of his own success. It was the political threat he posed during the coalition era that more than anything else caused David Cameron to pledge to hold an in-out referendum on EU membership if he won a majority. It is safe to say that without his persistence, we would never have left the European Union. Yet Farage is now politically redundant and what’s so strange about that is that he did it all to himself. When Farage declared that the Brexit ‘war is over’ after the government announced its trade deal with the EU on Christmas Eve, my first thought was that

Scots may be getting vaccinated against Covid, but they already have the highest rate of immunity to the appeal of Nigel Farage to be found anywhere in the UK. So it was not a particular surprise that Farage today stayed away from the launch of the Scottish offshoot of his new entity, Reform UK. Instead it was left to party chairman Richard Tice to unveil the identity of the leader of Reform UK, Scotland. The sitting MSP Michelle Ballantyne, who stood unsuccessfully for the leadership of the Scottish Conservatives less than a year ago before going independent, has become the Scottish leader of Reform UK, without needing to win a single

Right-wing protest politics has just catastrophically over-reached in America, but it is suddenly back in business in Britain. Its dominant figure, Nigel Farage, has a new political start-up and is sounding rather pleased about it. Earlier this week the Electoral Commission finally — after more than eight weeks of humming and hawing — gave him permission to rebrand the mothballed Brexit party as Reform UK. ‘It is excellent news that the Electoral Commission has approved our name change application. The need for Reform in this country is greater than ever,’ tweeted the new Reform UK leader (an unelected post, naturally). Given that the Brexit party has not only been in

I have lost count of the number of times the Conservative Party has thought it has shot Nigel Farage’s fox. They stretch all the way back to David Cameron’s January 2013 pledge to hold an In/Out EU referendum, and include the party’s as yet unfulfilled summer promise to stop the illegal Channel crossings and its delivery of a trade deal with the EU that honours the fundamentals of Brexit. Given that the Covid vaccines have also taken some of the sting out of the lockdown debate, which the former Ukip leader was poised to exploit, many Tories will have felt able to relax a bit about the challenge on their

It will be some days before the full character of the Brexit trade deal and other future partnership arrangements with the EU become clear. The smoke and mirrors that often accompany budget statements surround this deal as well, and we must wait for expert analytical eyes to go through the body of the 500-page text and tell us what troubling details lurk inside it. But nonetheless, the very striking of a deal which can be argued to observe Boris Johnson’s basic red lines and bring an orderly switchover of trading arrangement stymies those who were seeking to catastrophise the final phase of Brexit. The mercurial Mr Farage is quite capable

Richard Tice is tall and lean, has a hint of Imran Khan around the eyes, and the ladies on reception in the office building where we meet seem to like him. Were Jilly Cooper to write a political novel then he would be its hero rather than anti-hero. Tice was, after all, the clean-cut one in the ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’, a band whose line up was completed by Arron Banks, Andy Wigmore and Nigel Farage. Tice is the chairman of the Farage-led Brexit party, a title he is finding irksome this afternoon as he would much rather by now be chairman of Reform UK, the new identity he and

The terms of the Covid debate have changed markedly since Nigel Farage decided to re-enter the political arena after Boris Johnson’s second English lockdown. Even with multiple vaccines coming on stream, we can still not rule out a third lockdown — but we can be pretty darned sure there won’t be a fourth. It’s not the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end. So Farage and his chief lieutenant Richard Tice can no longer depend on anti-lockdown fervour alone to give them a flying start, despite the rebellious mood of Tory MPs. Could they, therefore, decide that discretion is the better part of valour and call the whole thing off, especially if there

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is a useful stop for journalists looking for some rust-belt Americana not too far from New York. The city feels a bit like a museum. Not so long ago, Bethlehem Steel was one of the biggest steel and ship-building companies in the world. Today the vast mill, which shut down in 1995, is a cultural events centre. Next to the mill is a replacement economic hub for Bethlehem — the Wind Creek mega-casino. My colleague Matt and I spent a couple of days in and around west Bethlehem, Northampton County. Northampton voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016. Last week, by less than 1

During the 2015 general election campaign, when I was directing operations at the London HQ for Ukip, I had an ‘absolutely brilliant’ idea. The next day Nigel Farage would be campaigning on the Isle of Thanet, in Kent, where he was standing for election. On our grid, it was earmarked to be Small Business Day – designed to showcase the party’s manifesto focus on the self-employed and SMEs, aka ‘the backbone of the British economy’. My plan? During his campaigning, Nigel should visit a butcher, a baker and a candlestick-maker (as mentioned in the nursery rhyme ‘Rub-A-Dub-Dub’). A suitable butcher’s shop and a bakery near to his route were swiftly

The idea of a flotilla of little ships crossing the English Channel from France to deposit their beleaguered human cargo safely on our shores was born in this country’s darkest hour during the second world war. To say that the method behind the success of the Dunkirk evacuation 80 years ago has been repurposed for the modern age is something of an understatement. These days the little ships are usually inflatable dinghies packed with desperate young men from Asia and Africa who seek to evade this country’s immigration laws. They land at various points between Dover and Hastings and – if undetected – many head for rendezvous points pre-arranged with