Nigel farage

Nigel Farage’s latest intervention—declaring that Ukip is ‘going to take the lead making the case for voting to leave the EU in the referendum—neatly sums up the dilemma facing the Out campaign. On the one hand, there’s a danger that if it doesn’t get moving now then the In campaign will have a massive, and possibly insurmountable, advantage by the time the vote is actually called. On the other, if Out is too closely associated with Ukip then it won’t be able to get the 50.1 percent of the vote that it needs to win the referendum. For while Farage might be quite brilliant at motivating the 13 percent who

After mounting public pressure, Sepp Blatter has today announced he will resign as Fifa president. This comes after the 79-year-old was re-elected last week in the role, despite being embroiled in a corruption scandal. Blatter’s decision to resign, even though he seemingly remains popular with his colleagues, has struck a chord with one UK politician. Jim Murphy, the former Labour leader, says it all sounds familiar: But is Blatter set to continue in the way of Nigel Farage and ‘unresign’? With Betway currently offering 5/1 odds that Blatter will do exactly that, Mr S suspects it’s not a suggestion to be scoffed at. No departure date has been given yet though Blatter says he will ‘urge the

How very tiresome it already is to hear arguments over the European Referendum campaign based not on numbers and facts, but on emotion, intuition, and partisanship. I would have thought that after Dan Hodges’s worst nightmare, politicos would be a bit more cautious about their predictions. Ukip’s former treasurer, Stuart Wheeler, doesn’t seem to have received the memo. I’m not Wheeler-bashing. He has done a great number of things for Ukip and the Eurosceptic movement over his career. But in his piece entitled, ‘Nigel Farage cannot lead the Out campaign‘, he makes a very dangerous intervention — one that is also championed by Ukip’s turbulent priest Douglas Carswell and his puppet

After Nigel Farage resigned as the leader of Ukip following his South Thanet defeat, he appointed Suzanne Evans as the party’s temporary leader. However, this appointment turned out to be fleeting, with Farage ‘unresigning’ days later. Happily, Evans got a chance to relive her glory days when she appeared on BBC’s This Week. The producers appeared to have some fun with her on-air description, billing her as ‘Former Ukip leader, 8th – 11th May 2015’. Given that she recently stepped down as the party’s policy chief following divisions in Ukip over Farage’s ‘unresignation’, Mr S wonders whether Evans might continue to use the BBC’s description for future interviews.

I suppose, if you could look deep into the mind of somebody who was passionately keen that Britain should leave the European Union then, in among things like old episodes of Dad’s Army and unassailable convictions that Cornwall produces some perfectly good vintages, and so on, you might also spot a vision of the future. In this vision, our referendum will have been and gone and Britain will have seen the light and left the EU. Everybody will have been convinced. Even Nick Clegg. The question will have been settled for a generation at least, and there will be no need to talk about it anymore and we’ll be able

Sandi Toksvig disclosed last month that she has given up her role on Radio 4’s The News Quiz in order to focus on launching the Women’s Equality Party. Appearing at the Hay Festival, Toksvig spoke about her reasons for wanting to start the new political party, which aims to ensure women are treated equally to men. In doing so, she also launched a series of jokes about today’s politicians, claiming that the current political system is ‘beyond broken’. She said that Labour’s pink bus had ‘[Emmeline] Pankhurst spinning in her grave’ while today’s government makes the coalition seem like the ‘good old days’ to many. While Toksvig is clearly no longer

After Nigel Farage resigned as the leader of Ukip following his defeat in South Thanet, he hastily ‘unresigned’ days later. Not everyone was pleased by the quick turnaround, with Ukip MEP Patrick O’Flynn and party donor Stuart Wheeler criticising Farage over his reinstatement. This in-fighting resulted in both of Farage’s personal advisers Raheem Kassam and Matthew Richardson leaving the party. However, while Ukip rebel O’Flynn has since appeared to have his comeuppance this week, standing down as the party’s economics spokesman, times may also be a’changing for Farage’s more loyal supporters. Although Kassam is now back with his former employer Breitbart London, word reaches Mr S that Richardson may go the same way as Farage and ‘unresign’. Steerpike

Peace appears to have broken out across Ukip, albeit after Nigel Farage has stamped down on those who criticised him. Suzanne Evans is the latest casualty of the Ukip wars, with her job as Head of Policy coming to an end. While Mark Reckless is rumoured to have been offered the role, Evans is stepping aside gracefully: ‘It has been a great privilege to work with UKIP for the past four months to produce the 2015 General Election manifesto. I was delighted with the way it was received, especially by party members and supporters. While my contract for that work comes to an end next week, I remain in my voluntary post

Mark Reckless has been rather quiet during the recent Ukip wars. After losing Rochester & Strood to the Conservatives, it has been expected he would return to the party in some role or another. Now, it is rumoured that he will become the party’s new Head of Policy – replacing Suzanne Evans, who wrote the 2015 manifesto. Given that he temporarily gave the party its second seat, it would be cruel not to give Reckless something after a defeat many in the party expected. I understand that Reckless was offered the job during the contentious NEC meeting last week, where Nigel Farage unresigned as leader. It’s unknown whether he will

What a difference a day makes. Only yesterday it seemed that the Ukip civil war was still rattling on, with Nigel Farage’s former senior advisor Raheem Kassam writing a feisty article for the Telegraph criticising Douglas Carswell, who had in turn criticised Farage. Happily relations between Carswell and Farage seem amiable for now. They were joined by rumoured Ukip leadership hopeful Suzanne Evans for a selfie outside Number 10. The trio met with members of the Green party and Plaid Cymru as they called for David Cameron to organise fairer voting system than first past the post. Not that this cause stopped Carswell from focussing on Ukip matters at the meet. Is this a photo of the future Ukip leadership?

Ukip’s internal warfare continues today with interventions from both sides. Suzanne Evans, the party’s deputy chairman, appeared on the Andrew Marr Show this morning to play down the tensions. She told Andrew Marr that the situation has been overegged: ‘I don’t think anyone hates anyone, I genuinely don’t. I think we’ve had some problems with some advisers around Nigel who very much kept him in their pocket if you like and he’s had too much influence from them. But they’ve gone.’ She singled out Raheem Kassam, Farage’s ex-senior advisor, who she happily noted has left the party and returned to work for Breitbart, a ‘far right, Tea Party, American style shock-and-awe publication’ where she

Nigel Farage said today his critics need to put up or shut up and Douglas Carswell has chosen the former. Confirming that he is the ‘senior figure’ Farage mentioned earlier, the Clacton MP has written an op-ed in the Times tomorrow calling for a change in direction. He says that ‘Ukip has arrived — and Ukip is here to stay’ but calls for Farage to step aside as leader, temporarily or permanently: ‘On Monday, Ukip’s national executive committee made a decision to reinstate Nigel as party leader. Yet even leaders need to take a break. Nigel needs to take a break now.’ But in classic Carswell style, he denies that he