Nigel farage

That was a surprisingly well-mannered debate, tightly moderated, with the main chaos coming from the member of the audience who decided to start heckling (and then stopped, followed by an ominous thud). There wasn’t a big upset at any point, and even the big moments weren’t really big stories. Those big moments were Nick Clegg going straight for David Cameron at the start, Nigel Farage’s rather scary rant, Leanne Wood telling Farage he should be ashamed of himself, Miliband on zero hours contracts, and Clegg turning on Miliband at the end. But no-one messed up. David Cameron came across as being really rather uninspiring, but I suspect that this was the

You might have thought Ukip bosses would want to distance themselves from their outspoken and eccentric candidate Winston McKenzie after he organised the disastrous ‘Carnival of Colour’ in Croydon last year before going on to declare that Farage was bigger than Jesus. However, Ukip don’t play by the usual rules. In fact senior party figures wear their allegiance to Winston on their sleeve, almost literally. At the launch of the party’s pledge card in Westminster on Monday, party chairman Steve Crowther proudly sported a handmade purple fox that looked like it might have been made by a primary school child. In fact rather than beeing the work of a seven-year-old, it was more of McKenzie’s

The stakes have been raised, at least psychologically, for Thursday night’s debate. Today’s YouGov poll has Labour four points ahead, in contrast to a two point Tory lead in their last survey. This is being seen in Westminster as a Paxman bounce for Miliband. If this Labour leads is still in place at the end of the Easter weekend, Tory nerves will begin to fray. Thursday’s debate will be a crowded affair with seven leaders on stage. Despite it being a two hour debate, there’ll only be time for four questions. As I say in the Mail On Sunday, the debate will almost certainly turn into Cameron versus the rest as they

The establishment drive to marginalise Ukip has been under way for three months now, and it has having its effect. You will not read anything about Ukip in your newspapers unless it is a negative story — some half-witted candidate’s office fraudulently claiming expenses, or a disappointed member explaining that they’re all vile people and so on. The papers have, by and large, cottoned on to the fact that Nigel Farage saying something a little gamey about race is not, actually, a negative story. Whenever the Ukip leader mused in moderate terms that he found it uncomfortable to sit on a train where he was the only person speaking English,

Faragephobia reached dizzy new heights on Sunday afternoon, when a bunch of thespians and circus freaks invaded Nigel Farage’s local pub and hounded him and his family out. Behaving with grating and probably knowing irony like small-minded Little Englanders, though dolled up as punkish outsiders, the protesters were basically saying to Nige: ‘Your sort aren’t welcome here — you’re barred!’ And so was a public figure humiliated while doing that utterly non-public thing of lunching with his wife and young daughters — turfed out of his own local hangout by people who don’t like his policies on immigration, the NHS, and other stuff. But this was more that Faragephobia, more than

After months of negotiations, a final deal on debates has now been reached. There will be no head to head debate between Cameron and Miliband. Instead, there will be one seven way debate on April 2nd broadcast on ITV. There will also be an opposition leaders’ debate on the 16th of April on the BBC featuring Labour, the SNP, UKIP, the Greens and Plaid Cymru. On top of these debates, David Cameron and Ed Miliband will both do separate interviews, taking questions from a studio audience on Thursday for a Channel 4 / Sky programme. Then, on 3oth of April, Cameron, Miliband and Nick Clegg will appear separately on a

After the Ukip MEP Janice Atkinson was suspended from her party following claims that a member of her staff tried to get a fake receipt to increase an expense claim, media pundits have claimed that Ukip is in crisis. However, according to Nigel Farage’s right hand man, this is not the case.  Raheem Kassam has taken to Twitter to say that things are going so swimmingly for Ukippers that he even has time to play on his Xbox, while members of the press office have been spending time in the pub. That’s all cleared up then.

I think I have seen Nigel Farage’s future, and it is not pretty. A copy of Farage’s The Purple Revolution reached my desk today. The cover instantly reminded me of a cover manifesto for Ron Paul, the once inspiring libertarian radical who has turned into something of a crank. On Farage’s book, the word LOVE has been mirrored on to the word Revolution. Ron Paul posters used to employ the same silly trick. As did Russell Brand. It is becoming a sort of logo for anti-establishment feeling. It is also hilariously crap. ‘Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,’ said Eric Hoffer. The quote certainly

After Mr S revealed the strict door policy for the launch of Nigel Farage’s new book The Purple Revolution at the Blue Boar in Westminster, the impromptu drinks affair was filled with mostly friendly faces from the media. Columnist Isabel Oakeshott introduced the Ukip leader, telling the audience that ‘of all the politicians I’ve had lunch with over the years — and there are an awful lot of them — Nigel is right up there in the top five of the best people to have what I think he calls a PFL: a proper f—ing lunch”. Farage himself was in an ebullient mood, following the multi-day serialisation of his book. He used