Nigel farage

‘Ukip seems to have imploded,’ one ‘mainstream’ politician remarked to me yesterday. ‘We haven’t heard anything from them.’ True, Ukip have been rather quiet since Christmas, but anyone in the Tories or Labour who is dancing around imagining that they’re set fair for an election without Nigel Farage has got rather carried away. The truth is that Farage’s party has decided to stay a little quiet for a few weeks, at least while the main parties slug it out over who would really cut the deficit and who really cares about the NHS. Sources tell me that they think the effect of all these launches, counter-launches, dossiers and dossiers debunking

Ukip’s commonwealth spokesperson Winston McKenzie – he of Carnival of Colour fame – is never far from controversy. It was only a matter of time before a devout Ukipper compared their hero Nigel Farage to a deity and we should have all guessed it would be Winston: ‘Jesus was one man. We are his army. Nigel Farage is one man and we are his army and that’s what it’s all about’ Happy Faragemas, everybody.

Ukip has confirmed this morning that Nigel Farage’s wife is still in receipt of public money — despite an on air denial from her husband. The party could not have paid for better PR on Channel 4 last night, with Farage meeting Gogglebox poshos Steph and Dom for a special one off programme. One exchange caught Steerpike’s eye, regarding employment of his wife. Nige claimed Kirsten was no longer ‘paid by the public sector’. In fact, the Ukip leader could not have been clearer: ‘Dom: But she is also your wife and she’s working for you Farage: She is no longer paid by the public sector. Dom: Ok so now you have

Would you invite Nigel Farage around for drinks and dinner? Steph and Dom Meet…Nigel Farage shows what happened when the ‘posh couple’ from Gogglebox did just that. The Ukip leader comes across as a pretty ordinary bloke — or at least his projection of one. This Gogglebox special could be seen as either a Ukip party political broadcast or the makings of a political satire — with some great throw away lines. ‘He looks like a frog that’s sat on a nail,’ said Dom in anticipation of his guest’s arrival. ‘Was it the politics that screwed up the first marriage?’ he went on. Farage happily told the pair he ‘couldn’t care less’ what

Ukip are cock-a-hoop this afternoon with news that controversial proprietor Richard Desmond is to donate £300,000 to Farage’s party ahead of the 2015 election. Express sources confirm that Dirty Desmond gave the Ukip leader the full treatment on 2 December, with the Nigel personally given a full tour of his Northern and Shell Thames-side complex. Farage visited both the Express and Star as well as the Channel 5 newsroom before retiring up to Desmond’s budget-Bond Villan style lair overlooking Tower Bridge to hammer out the deal. ‘He was shown the full-weight of the machine Desmond was promising to throw behind him’ says one inky-fingered whisperer. The porno-peddling baron has form

Today’s conclusion from the British Election Study that Ukip will hurt the Tories far more than it will damage Labour at the General Election is unsurprising, but still important as its warning that the Conservative party could lose nearly two million voters to Nigel Farage’s party underlines the need for the Tories to find a decent solution to Ukip. Thus far the Tories have tended to capitulate to Ukip on policies, with Nigel Farage becoming a think tank for policy development by applying pressure on nervous MPs who eventually secure concessions from David Cameron in the form of policies he didn’t really want to announce. But last month David Cameron

What is the reasoning behind Nigel Farage’s recent spate of apparent gaffes? Following his breastfeeding comments last week, the Ukip leader blamed his lateness to an event in Wales on open-door immigration, as well as problems navigating the motorway: ‘It took me six hours and 15 minutes to get here – it should have taken three-and-a-half to four. That is nothing to do with professionalism, what it does have to do with is a country in which the population that is going through the roof chiefly because of open-door immigration and the fact that the M4 is not as navigable as it used to be.’ listen to ‘Farage blames the

Ukip’s crisis is the Conservatives’ gain. Following Nigel Farage’s comments about ‘ostentatious’ breastfeeding, Conservative HQ have been promoting this graphic online, with a title noting that Farage is ‘making it up as he goes along’: This kind of graphic is just another example of how the Tories have become more proactive in promoting their point of view on social media over last year, using Twitter as an opportunity to attack others while protecting their position. This Farage one is an example of both: it hits out at Ukip for their perceived flakiness — expect to see much more of this in the coming months — while reminding voters that Ukip also has a

A lot of political types are very cross with the ‘biased media’ today. Ukip is currently the most aerated because some journalists ‘fabricated’ (which is today synonymous with ‘transcribed’) some remarks Nigel Farage made about whether or not restaurants are right to tell women to put napkins over themselves when breastfeeding. Number 10 is very angry with the BBC’s Norman Smith because he talked about the Road to Wigan Pier which is not an OK way of describing the public spending cuts still to come (but the IFS describing them as ‘grotesque’ and ‘colossal’ apparently is). Labour has been annoyed for months that journalists keep pointing out mistakes that Ed Miliband makes. Unusually,

Ukip are desperate to build on the momentum from their Rochester win as the general election looms ever closer. At the very top of the party figures including leader Nigel Farage and Deputy Chairman Suzanne Evans have made no secret of the fact that they’d like their next major defector to come from Labour. So, are Ukip going to succeed in wooing over a Labourite, and if so, who? Former Cabinet member Kate Hoey has the right Eurosceptic credentials for Ukip, although her Vauxhall constituency doesn’t lend itself to joining the purple ‘people’s army’, given Ukip’s weakness in London. I got in touch with her office and Hoey replied saying ‘I

Ukip’s victory in Rochester has lead to the inevitable question of ‘what next?’ for the party. Now that Nigel Farage has two representatives in the House of Commons, his main answer is shockingly more MPs. Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless came from the Conservative Party, but there has been much chatter in Westminster about the possibility of a Labour defector. Frank Field and Austin Mitchell are just two of the names that are mentioned. Farage added credence to these rumours by acknowledging he has been in touch with a ‘few’ Labour people. Speaking to reporters in Rochester this morning, the Ukip leader said: ‘I would love a Labour defector because that would reinforce