Nigel farage

A battle cry has gone out for more troops, and the UKIP faithful have responded. Newark, packed with Tory spinners and regularly visited by David Cameron and assorted Tory grandees, has now attracted hundreds of purple campaigners for this week’s by-election. From all corners of the UK – from Scotland to Cornwall, the Eastern counties to Wales, the most fervent UKIP believers gathered yesterday for a public meeting near Newark, and a chance to see their chief protagonist, Nigel Farage. ‘After the European elections, we can smell blood,’ said a cheerful UKIP activist, Scott Cross, from Hampshire. Former Tory activist Steve Stanbury, who defected to UKIP a few years ago,

Following last week’s Purple Revolution in which the pro-democracy Faragist rebels liberated Britain from the hated pro-EUSSR LibLabCon stooges (at least this is the version I’m telling my kids to repeat to their teachers), a number of people have written about what appears to be the opening of a ‘culture war’ in Britain. Andrew Sullivan talks about ‘blue Europe and red Europe’ in the sense of America’s blue and red states, and sees Ukip as representing the latter just as the Republican Party does conservative, left-behind America. I think there’s some truth in that. Dan Hannan, in true conservative style, clutching doom from victory, has suggested that the rise of

Your enemy’s enemy is not necessarily your friend. That is something forgotten too easily. Nevertheless, though he may not be your friend he may, for a time at least, be your ally. And so it came to pass that Nigel Farage is, for the time being, Labour’s new best chum. In Scotland, that is. The Tories are quite pleased with him too and, if anyone could find them, perhaps the Liberal Democrats would be too. Of course, officially, there is much tut-tutting and hand-wringing over Ukip’s success in Scotland. We’re all supposed to be simply appalled that these fruitcakes have won a seat in the European parliament. Terrible stuff. Come

The self-styled anti-establishment ‘People’s Army’ chose the most expensive hotel in Westminster to announce the professionalisation of their party machine. Nigel Farage’s post-European election press conference was completely stage managed — from the security on the door to the lack of questions from the floor, right down to the moment he was whisked away from the InterContinental Westminster in a blacked out Land Rover with his key donor Paul Sykes. But Ukip were not done yet, Farage presumably just drove round the block a few times because he was soon back sinking a vat of merlot at his victory party — which your correspondent attempted to crashed with various degrees of

Nigel Farage has told BBC News this afternoon he intends to stand in a seat ‘south of the river’ at the general election next year. Despite undertaking a victory lap of Essex today, Farage has proclaimed he won’t be standing there: ‘There are several seats here in Essex that are absolutely winnable for us in a general election next year. I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to do but I will choose a seat; it will be a seat south of the area.’ listen to ‘Farage: I will run in 2015’ on Audioboo

Whatever the result is when the votes are counted, there’s no doubt who has dominated this campaign: Ukip. From the Farage-Clegg debates to the discussions during the past few days about Romanian neighbours, it has been the other parties that have been responding to Ukip. A party that has no MPs and received a mere 3 per cent at the last general election has managed to set the agenda for a nationwide election. To try and understand how Ukip have done this, I went out on the road with Nigel Farage. One of the things that marks Farage out from the other party leaders is that he relishes debate. When

Nigel Farage has told The Spectator that he doesn’t want to lead the Out campaign come an EU referendum. In an interview, he said, ‘It needs a figurehead and I’m a warrior not a figurehead.’ Farage believes that if Ukip win the European Elections then a referendum will be inevitable. He says that come the referendum, he will play his part ‘I’m a fixed bayonet man, albeit that I don’t see myself as a private. But I see myself leading a division into battle, that’s where I fit in.’ The Ukip leader wants someone who ‘someone who has been very big in British politics’ to take charge of the No

Ukip held a carnival in my hometown, and I found myself caught up in it. They’d enticed us to the Whitgift Centre with talk of a steel band, their large number of local BME candidates and a chance to see Nigel Farage. After more accusations of racism, picking Croydon did make sense for the party. It is London’s most populous borough and the largest town in Europe. It can confidently describe itself as one of the ‘melting pots’ politicians love: 2011 Census data shows White British people make up less than 50 per cent of the population, with 18 different ethnic groups living in the borough. Ukip’s local candidates include