Nigel farage

Nigel Farage’s departure comes at the best possible time for Ukip. The party could be hoovering up votes from Labour’s heartlands which voted for Out in surprisingly large numbers in the referendum. But since that result, figures in Ukip had been feeling dismayed that their party seemed angry and disorganised, unable to reach out to those Labour voters. Farage spent most of the referendum campaign behaving badly, almost trying to sabotage his own side, before conceding that Remain had won just hours before it became clear that Leave had won. Now there is an opportunity for the party to re-brand as ‘Newkip’, taking a more optimistic stance. Douglas Carswell, who

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 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

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 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

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

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

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. The former Social Democrat politician, who is the current chief exec of Save the Children, says the majority of Danes want to remain in the EU

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

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

Nowadays it’s difficult for the BBC to air anything without facing some accusation of bias. As well as the well documented strand of right-wing bias and EU bias, there’s now anti-Corbyn bias — with the BBC’s Nick Robinson even accusing his employer of the latter. Last night things got so bad in the EU debate with David Cameron and Nigel Farage that the Beeb were accused of pro-EU bias once more. Ukip’s David Coburn took to Twitter to vent that the ‘BBC Knew the questions in advance’ and ‘chose which audience members speak’ so Remain had an easier ride. Alas, the Scottish MEP concludes that ‘Cameron still lost despite Aunties

Welcome to Coffee House’s coverage of ITV’s EU referendum debate. David Cameron and Nigel Farage faced public questions on the EU referendum. Here’s our commentary, as well as audio and video highlights, from the discussion.  PODCAST: Listen to Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman give their verdict on Cameron vs Farage: DAVID CAMERON:   James Forsyth David Cameron looked pretty happy at the end of that. He got his choice of opponent in this debate and did everything he could to take advantage of that, mentioning Farage at every opportunity. Cameron also benefited from going second, another thing which he got his way on, as he could rebut Farage’s points without any