Nigel farage

Rochester is not a freak. It has given us a glimpse of what bookies now believe to be the lost likely outcome of the next election: that no one wins. I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column today. ‘All bets are off,’ said Nigel Farage after Mark Reckless prevailed in yesterday’s by-election. But that’s not quite right: bets are being made, and the balance of money points to ‘no overall control’. That is to say: a Prime Minister too unpopular to win a majority, and too toxic to be able to form a coalition. A minority government that can’t call an early election thanks to the Fixed-Term Parliaments

Rochester, Kent With five hours before the polls close in Rochester and Strood, Nigel Farage is confident that Ukip will romp home to victory. Outside the Sweet Expectations shop on Thursday evening, the Ukip leader emerged with a pack of bon bons and brushed aside predictions of a landslide victory as ‘slightly over-egged’. Yet Farage appeared confident that Mark Reckless will become Ukip’s second MP. ‘I feel our vote is solid,’ he said ‘I think we’re going to win but I think it might be a bit closer than people think.’ With the prospect of a significant victory over the Tories, Farage was also keen to raise the importance of this by-election. ‘This matters

Earlier today, Ukip leader Nigel Farage sent what appeared to be a typewritten letter to Ed Miliband challenging him to a head-to-head debate. The Labour leader has now used a more modern form of communication to respond. And, funnily enough, it’s a no: .@Nigel_Farage Bring it on. I look forward to a debate with you, @David_Cameron and @Nick_Clegg in the election campaign. — Ed Miliband (@Ed_Miliband) November 13, 2014 Actually what Miliband would dislike far more than an hour fighting Farage on television (which didn’t work out all that well for Nick Clegg when he did it before the European elections), would be any televised debate involving the Green Party, who

Nigel Farage has talked in the past about his readiness to prop up a Labour minority government – he gave an interview to the Sunday People in October in which he said the Labour leader would just have to offer a referendum and a deal would be possible. But the fact that he has repeated it to the New Statesman this week is hardly helpful when his party is going head to head with the Tories in Rochester. His comments to Jason Cowley help David Cameron’s squeeze message, which is that if you vote Ukip, you get Miliband. Ukip are trying to sound as though they don’t care that this

Interviews with Ukip bigwigs used to happen in pubs. But times are changing. When I meet Patrick O’Flynn — the party’s economics spokesman, and until recently chief spin doctor — it’s in a juice bar. O’Flynn, a former political editor of the Daily Express who studied economics at Cambridge, is one of those driving Ukip towards professionalism. Ukip, he says, is the only party he’s ever joined, and it is ‘not part of the Conservative family’. That is why he rates its chances in northern Labour seats: ‘We didn’t close down any coal mines or steelworks and we’re not known as the patrician Home Counties rich people’s party.’ He claims,

Channel 4 has commissioned a docu-drama that will imagine what life will be like for poor and oppressed ordinary British people under the first few months of a Ukip government. As you can imagine with Channel 4, this will undoubtedly be an exercise in the very quintessence of impartiality and fair-mindedness. They plan to run it just before the 2015 general election. Bookies are already taking bets on who will play Nigel Farage – Michael Sheen is one of the favourites. However my guess is that Bruno Ganz, so mesmerising as Adolf Hitler in ‘Downfall’, will get the nod. Especially if he keeps the moustache. A spokesbore for the channel said: ‘This

For all Nigel Farage’s appealing bluster, he is never going to be in a position to get us out of Europe or, indeed, achieve anything at all. He is, in other words, pointless. The sole consequence of his emergence on to the political scene will be that the next election stands a good chance of producing an Italian-style hodge-podge: no winners at all. Ancient Greeks would have demanded an ostracism. An ostracism was a way of getting rid of a political troublemaker in order to clear the decision-making air for the democratic Assembly of Athenian citizens. It was not a legal process, with prosecution and defence and verdict; nor was

Before the by-election battle with Ukip in Rochester that Westminster is rather obsessed with, there’s another chance for Nigel Farage’s party to cause a political earthquake. Tomorrow, voters in South Yorkshire will go to the polls to elect a new police and crime commissioner to replace Shaun Wright, who eventually resigned after the Rotherham child abuse scandal. Ukip is fighting a vigorous campaign in this PCC election, launching posters at the weekend that read ‘there are 1,400 reasons why you should not trust Labour again’, with a picture of a teenage girl on them. The party’s candidate Jack Clarkson does have a good chance of winning the seat from Labour,

Tonight, we have a second poll from Rochester & Strood and it again shows Ukip ahead. Mark Reckless doesn’t lead by Clacton margins—Ukip are on 43 and the Tories 30 in this ComRes poll—but his advantage is formidable with just four weeks to go. Particularly alarming for the Tories is how many voters there intend to use this by-election to kick the government. 62 percent of those polled agree with the statement that, ‘“This by-election is a good opportunity for me to show David Cameron and the Conservative Party how unhappy I am with their government”   Having already announced that Cameron—and every other Tory member of the Cabinet—will visit

Imagine if David Cameron actually meant it. Imagine if he really did follow through with his implied threat to campaign for Brexit in the absence of better terms from Brussels. You can picture the televised address. An oak-panelled background with a large union flag hanging sedately in the corner, the PM with that furrowed house-captain expression he sometimes does. The script pretty much writes itself. ‘All of you know how hard I tried to secure a new deal. I was often criticised for being too conciliatory, but it was my duty to do whatever was in my power to reform the EU. I have to tell you today that the

What a godsend to Ukip José Manuel Barroso must be.  On his recent short visit to the UK he not only managed to tell the British public that limits to immigration (desired by the overwhelming majority of the British public) would be ‘illegal’.  He also managed to tell us that if we left the EU, Britain would have ‘zero’ influence in the world. I do wonder who bureaucrats like Mr Barroso think they are going to persuade.  Are they simply relying on swaying or scaring us on the presumption that we have no historical knowledge or memory?  Because this latest message can’t possibly work, can it?  Most British people don’t

In this week’s issue, Lord Pearson, the former leader of Ukip, describes how he tried to offer the Tories a pact before the last general election, but Cameron refused to  meet with him to discuss it.  Now it’s too late, says Lord Pearson, and Cameron has forced Ukip to fight him to the end. Lord Pearson and Damian Green, the Conservative MP for Ashford, join Lara Prendergast on the podcast to discuss relations between the Tories and Ukip. Should we ever negotiate with the Islamic State? Jonathan Powell has recently suggested we should consider it. Jenny McCartney takes issue with his stance though. She suggests Powell’s experience of negotiating with the IRA does not mean he is an expert on