Nigel farage

Nigel Farage says farewell: ‘We brought down a prime minister’

Nigel Farage has just delivered his speech at Ukip conference, in which he declared that he had put ‘absolutely all of me’ into Britain leaving the EU. ‘I literally couldn’t have worked any harder, or couldn’t have been more determined – it’s been my life’s work to get to this point. I want my country back, but now folks I want my life back,’ he said. He went onto claim that Ukip had ‘changed the course of British history’ and suggested that the party had ‘brought down a prime minister’ and had ‘got rid of a chancellor’. On Theresa May’s premiership, he suggested there was a ‘great political battle ahead’, before raising concerns that she

James Forsyth

Diane James is Ukip’s new leader – but will she be haunted by Nigel Farage?

Diane James is the new Ukip leader. The party’s home affairs spokesman won with 8,451 votes. She beat Lisa Duffy into second place by nearly 4,000 votes. Bill Etheridge came third, Phillip Broughton fourth and Liz Jones fifth. James was the frontrunner and her victory was expected given that Steven Woolfe and Suzanne Evans were both barred from running. But James ran one of the least inspiring leadership campaigns in recent political memory. She didn’t announce any new policies and avoided debate at every opportunity. James, as anyone who watched her in the BBC’s young people’s EU debate during the referendum campaign will know, is not as accomplished a media performer as Nigel Farage. She will

Questions over Ukip’s future on the eve of its conference

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

Mr Brexit meets… Mr Brexit

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

What performing stand-up in Ukip country taught me about racism

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

How Breitbart hijacks right-wing populism

The news that Donald Trump’s new campaign manager is Steve Bannon, head of the right-wing media site Breitbart, has shocked a few commentators. It shouldn’t. For almost a year now, it’s been obvious to anybody who can be bothered to look that the Trump campaign and Breitbart fit together like hand in glove, though who is the hand and who is the glove is harder to fathom. Bitter ex-Breitbart employees now call the site ‘Trump’s Pravda’. The name seems to have been coined by Ben Shapiro, one of Breitbart’s more successful journalists, who finally had enough and resigned over what he saw as a lack of editorial integrity in the age of the Donald.

What was Nigel Farage doing at the German embassy?

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

Friday caption contest: Farage’s new look

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 excluded from Ukip leadership race

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

Tom Goodenough

Ukip’s leadership race kicks off. Who are the candidates hoping to replace Nigel Farage?

The final shortlist for who will replace Nigel Farage has been unveiled – and the frontrunner Steven Woolfe has been excluded. Ukip’s NEC said Woolfe was left off the list after being deemed ‘ineligible as a result of a late submission’, having missed the party’s nomination deadline by seventeen minutes. It’s a decision which is sure to cause ruptures within the party. So who are the candidates who have made it on to the list? Diane James is the new favourite to replace Nigel Farage after Steven Woolfe was kept off the ballot paper. The party’s justice and home affairs spokeswoman has capitalised on the various blunders which afflicted Woolfe to find

Coffee House Shots: Ukip’s leadership contest

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

Steerpike

Steven Woolfe finds himself in a tight spot

It’s only Tuesday and Steven Woolfe must already be wishing this week was over. After missing the nomination deadline on Sunday, Woolfe will learn today whether his leadership application will be accepted. If that weren’t enough, he is also in the firing line over his lapsed Ukip membership and the Huffington Post‘s revelation that Woolfe broke electoral rules in 2012 by failing to reveal a drink-drive conviction when he stood to be a Police and Crime Commissioner. Still, should Woolfe’s leadership hopes live to survive another day, Mr S understands that he will have to dig deep in order to win round party bean counters. Ukip MEPs are encouraged to regularly donate a portion of their lofty EU

In praise of walls

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

Farage hails ‘perfect storm’ of Brexit, Trump and worldwide populism

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

Can Ukip make the most of Andrea Leadsom’s departure?

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,

MEPs tell Brits: Auf wiedersehen et bonne chance

‘I am deeply concerned. I am usually quite the optimist but this is probably the first time that I have ever been pessimistic about the future of the European Union. Brexit will feed populism across Europe. And we can hardly expect to bounce back with the heads of State and government that we have today in Europe.’ Françoise Grossetête is a veteran at the European Parliament. The French 69-year-old MEP first took office in Brussels in 1994. For the last two years, she has been the deputy leader of the EPP group, the europhile conservative group in the European Parliament. Grossetete is not her usual chirpy self, as she gives

High life | 7 July 2016

I am trying to decide with some friends which is worse, English weather or English football. The former is improving as I write, but the latter’s problems are terminal. There are too many ‘directors of development’ and other jargon-packed non-jobs that interfere with the very simple process of developing football. Send them all to Iceland, bring on a dentist, and cut footballers’ salaries by 90 per cent, and you just might one day learn to win. But on to far more important things than ghastly football, like the wonderful garden party given by my friend Richard Northcott that brought back some very pleasant memories. There’s something rejuvenating about running into

Toby Young

The art of the quit

Brits don’t quit,’ said David Cameron two weeks ago, to which the obvious rejoinder is: ‘Oh but they do!’ The list of quitters since the referendum seems to grow every day, the latest being Nigel -Farage. Everyone made the same joke when they heard he had resigned — ‘How long for?’ — but when I bumped into Suzanne Evans earlier this week she told me he was still in charge. ‘I think he was giving notice of his intention to resign, but hasn’t put a date on it,’ she said. She was paying close attention, given that she became the interim leader the last time Nigel quit and lasted precisely

Portrait of the week | 7 July 2016

Home Conservative MPs set about finding two candidates for the party leadership to be put to party members as rival choices. Theresa May proved the frontrunner, gaining 165 votes in the first round, with Liam Fox least fancied, being eliminated in the first round with 16 votes, and Stephen Crabb gaining 34 and throwing in the towel. Boris Johnson, having been forced out of the contest by the sudden entry of his presumed supporter Michael Gove (who attracted 48 votes in the first round), gave his backing to the next most popular woman candidate among MPs, Andrea Leadsom, who polled 66. Mrs May said that the position of British citizens

Give us a break!

As Boris Johnson will know from his love of Greek tragedy, hubris leads to nemesis. And it is Boris’s own hubris — in playing cricket with Lord Spencer the weekend after Brexit, and not finishing his leadership speech on time — that supposedly led to his downfall. I well know from working with Boris at the Telegraph that prompt timekeeping is not his forte. For five years, my Wednesday nights were destroyed as Boris regularly missed the 7 p.m. deadline for delivering his column. ‘It hasn’t arrived,’ I’d say to him over the phone at 7.01 p.m. ‘Ah, Christ, sorry,’ said Boris, ‘Bloody internet! It must be pinging its way down those