Nigel farage

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

Scottish Ukip MEP David Coburn has been shouting off, as his way, about his party’s prospects north of the border in 2015. Mr Coburn is a curious character – and there is a certainly an element of bluster here: ‘We’re looking at the Scottish rust belt. Seats where there were serious industries that were ­allowed to run down, with no replacement. These are seats that Labour has treated like a feudal system. It’s the Central Belt of Scotland, where people have just been abandoned or given sops to keep them happy.’ Whilst it should not be forgotten that Ukip gained 10 per cent of the Scottish vote in European elections

The Tories may have watched Douglas Carswell’s re-entry into the House of Commons in silence, but he seems to be getting a reasonably warm reception from his old colleagues behind the scenes. He has already exchanged jokes and arranged to dine and drink with a number of them. For a few weeks this will send the whips into a spin, as they try to work out whether it really is just lunch, or a brewing defection. But it wasn’t just Carswell who was nattering with Conservatives this afternoon. Nigel Farage, who watched his first elected MP re-join the Commons from a gallery, has also been talking to some of them.