Nigel farage

The continuing saga of Henry Bolton’s notional leadership of Ukip continues to amaze and amuse and appal in equal measure. The press loves a freak show and, in the absence of anything better, Ukip is the best circus in town. You might think it odd to give so much attention to a party that won just 2 per cent of the vote in last year’s general election — but this is all about Kipperism, which is bigger than Ukip. Much of the time, it seems as though this is Ukip’s Britain. The rest of us just live in it. It amounts to the most stunning reverse takeover in modern British

Nigel Farage met Michel Barnier on Monday and is now calling, inexplicably, for a second EU referendum. He wants to rerun the whole thing. Well, I too have just got back from Brussels and no doubt Barnier said the same things to me and my three colleagues as he did to Nigel. That being the case, I think Nigel has lost the plot. I met Barnier on Wednesday along with Digby Jones, John Longworth and John Mills, all experienced and talented businesspeople with a deep understanding of the issues. We had a long discussion with Barnier, put our case for the EU accepting Brexit gracefully and acting with positivity in

Oh dear. Lord Adonis brought Theresa May’s Christmas holiday to an abrupt end yesterday with the news that he is resigning as the government’s infrastructure tsar, citing the Prime Minister’s Brexit direction and the government bail-out the Stagecoach/Virgin East Coast rail franchise. Not one to go quietly, Adonis penned a rather eccentric resignation letter – or several depending which account you believe – claiming Brexit is causing a nervous breakdown across Whitehall that resembles Suez. Government sources are keen to play down Adonis’s departure as a case of walking before he was pushed – saying that this is a man who wants to stop Brexit. While Mr S will leave readers

Nigel Farage found himself in the news over the weekend after his former aide claimed she was told to keep her ‘relationship’ with Farage secret at all costs – to help save Brexit. In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Annabelle Fuller alleged that she and Farage had a relationship dating from 2004 until October last year – describing it as grossly inappropriate and damaging to her mental wellbeing. In response to the claims, the former Ukip leader neither confirmed nor denied the story – simply saying that he had ‘always tried to help her, recognising that she had ability, and prevented her from being fired on several occasions.’ So, given the

There are plenty of theories about what led to the Brexit vote. Now, Al Gore, has a new one to add to the pile. The former vice president – who has been busy promoting his new film by labelling those who question him ’deniers’ – says the EU referendum result was brought about because of… climate change. Gore suggested that the war in Syria was caused by ‘climate refugees’ flooding into the cities. This, in turn, by Gore’s version of events at least, kickstarted the wider refugee crisis – eventually leading Brits to vote out last June. Here’s what Gore told the New European: ‘Long before the civil war in Syria began

Jeremy Corbyn is ‘almost a proper chap’, says Nigel Farage, lauding the Labour leader for sacking frontbenchers who voted for a Commons motion seeking to keep Britain in the Single Market. That’s a policy that, one suspects, quite a few recent middle-class metropolitan converts to Corbynism would agree with. Perhaps Mr Farage’s praise will help them see that JC isn’t quite the prophet of pro-European liberalism some of his admirers have somehow managed to imagine him as.  The Farage praise will doubtless appall many Corbynistas, who see him as the antichrist, the nasty, xenophobic antithesis of their cuddly, inclusive and not-at-all anti-Semitic messiah. It shouldn’t, though, since Jeremy and Nigel have always had a

Ukip is a party dwelling on its past glories rather than its future this afternoon. The party’s leader Paul Nuttall has very few crumbs of comfort from the results so far: Ukip has lost every single one of the seats it had previously held. It has, just moments ago, snatched a single seat from Labour in Lancashire. Yet even the most optimistic Kipper would struggle to put a spin on the performance so far. The line that there are still results to come through is rapidly wearing very thin. Instead, when Nuttall broke his silence earlier he talked of the party’s ‘electoral success over recent years’ and how the party had forced the

Paul Nuttall has just confirmed he will be standing in the upcoming election. The Ukip leader promised to be ‘leading the party into battle’ on June 8th. Where he stands, we’ll have to wait and see. Nuttall said that he would announce in the next 48 hours which seat he planned to target. In a statement, Nuttall said: ‘As the leader of the party I will be, obviously, leading the party into battle as I have done many times in the past’ Nuttall might now be saying his decision was obvious, but it hasn’t always looked that way. Earlier this week, when journalists tried to pin him down on the question

It’s easy to mock Nigel Farage over his decision to turn down an ‘easy win’ in Clacton or some other Westminster constituency in preference for the hard graft of the European Parliament and its excruciating regime of expenses and allowances. Easy, but quite likely wrong.  Whether or not he ever sets foot in Parliament, Farage can already claim to have changed British history. His role in the Brexit referendum result is debateable; his role in bringing about that referendum isn’t.   Just in case the story needs retelling, Farage did it by forming a connection between two issues: Europe and immigration. Until that linkage was made, Ukip was an ignorable

Mark Reckless infuriated many Tories when he defected to Ukip. Now, he’s defected again – and made few people happy in the process. The Ukip AM has announced that he is joining the Conservative Group in the Welsh Assembly, where he sits as a regional representative. Not for the first time, he is following in the footsteps of Douglas Carswell – this time by leaving Ukip behind. And his reasons for doing so are similar to Carswell’s: Brexit means that it’s mission accomplished. In his statement, he says: ‘I am joining the Conservative Group in the Welsh Assembly. I leave Ukip positively, having achieved our joint aim, a successful referendum

On 29 March 2019 the Queen should have a state dinner and invite the European Union’s 27 heads of state and its five presidents. The evening’s purpose would be to toast the new alliance between the United Kingdom and the EU: one based on free trade, security cooperation and shared democratic values. This celebration of the new alliance will be especially welcome after two years of negotiations which are bound to be fraught and, at times, ugly. The complexity and the sums of money involved pretty much guarantee this. There is, though, a particular onus on Britain to keep things civil. We have chosen to end this failed relationship, so

So poisonous were the relations between Nigel Farage and Douglas Carswell that no-one will have been surprised at the latter’s resignation from Ukip, nor the pleasure it generated among Farage and his supporters. It takes something to cheer the departure of your only MP; along with the funding that goes with it. Yet the irony is that in theory Farage and Carswell ought to have been soulmates in Ukip. Both are naturally social conservatives but economic liberals. In contrast to many Ukip members, neither are attracted by protectionism or anti-globalisation – two sentiments which also unite many of Donald Trump’s supporters. From what we know about the political views of

A new week, a new drama for Ukip. Although Nigel Farage last month called for Douglas Carswell to be kicked out of the party for disloyalty over a knighthood, it’s Farage’s righthand man Arron Banks who has today been left out in the cold.  The Ukip donor says he has been pushed out of the party after his membership lapsed. On trying to rejoin, Banks was told that he had been suspended ‘apparently for saying the current leadership couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding’. In recent weeks, the millionaire donor has become increasingly critical of the party leadership — demanding to be made chairman after Paul Nuttall lost the Stoke by-election. The

The row about whether Douglas Carswell did or didn’t block Nigel Farage’s knighthood has sparked another bout of civil war within Ukip. But Mr S is pleased to report there could be a happy ending after all. On Russia Today (natch), the former Ukip leader had a taste of what it would be like to get his gong. Unfortunately for Farage, his ‘knighthood’ was given to him by a child dressed in a cape rather than the Queen. But at least Farage got to hear those magic words: ‘Arise Sir Nigel’. However, the happy moment may well have been dampened at the end when the child turned to Farage and said to