Nigel farage

Perversity is a much undervalued British trait, much more redolent of our real psyche than queuing, drinking tea or being tolerant of foreigners and homosexuals — all things for which we are better renowned. Seeing Dunkirk as a victory was magnificently perverse. So, too, was electing a Labour government in 2005 shortly after we had invaded a sovereign country and created a civil war. For ‘perversity’ I suppose you could read ‘complexity’, although the two often amount to the same thing. Our reactions to stuff are never as straightforward as they should be — they are complex and therefore can seem perverse. And so it is right now. For three

Washington, D.C. Nigel Farage’s 2016 celebration of Nigel Farage’s 2016 is a party that might never stop. And it is a jolly affair. Yesterday, at the Hay-Adams Hotel, in Washington, DC, Nigel and his pals — let’s call them the champagne populists — had a US election bash. Nigel stood up to do his usual routine about how this year would be remembered in a hundred years as the glorious moment when nation state democracy reasserted itself, and everybody cheered.  The champagne populists raised lots of glasses to themselves and talked about how they got Donald J Trump elected to the White House. Meanwhile, the American voters who actually elected Donald

Kipling wrote about Brexit first, you know: “It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say: Though we know we should defeat you, We have not the time to meet you. We will therefore pay you cash to go away.” That, in essence, was David Cameron’s approach to the eurosceptics within his own party. Promise to pay just enough to keep them satisfied in the hope they would not then be emboldened to come back for more. But, as Kipling knew: “And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we’ve proved it again and again, That if once you have

While a storm has blown up between Nigel Farage and Brendan Cox this morning over the role played by Angela Merkel’s migrant policy in the Berlin Christmas market attack, the Today programme managed to find a man with a possible alternative explanation for the carnage: Brexit. Yes, really. This morning’s show ended with a man, introduced as a political scientist who has advised the French and German governments on counter-terrorism, offering the wisdom: ‘Brexit isn’t helpful…I mean so-called Islamic State were celebrating Brexit…we need to grow stronger, we need to find responses which are not only security-based , we need a common foreign policy.’ The idea that Islamic State ‘celebrated’

One remark from the Christmas party season knocks insistently around my head. It came from Nigel Farage on a staircase in the Ritz. For those who didn’t enjoy 2016, a year of political revolution, he gleefully promised: ‘2017 will be a hell of a sight worse.’ My, my. What did he mean? Had he taken one Ferrero Rocher too many? Or does Farage, like an increasing number of MPs, expect a general election next year, including further dramatic upsets? The biggest reason for pooh-poohing a 2017 election isn’t the Fixed-term Parliaments Act but Prime Minister’s character. Theresa May is extremely cautious and she doesn’t want to test the electorate just

Here we go again. As Paul Nuttall tries to prove that Ukip is a professional party on the path to electoral success, he may wish to have a word with his party’s campaigns team. With Ukip fielding a candidate in the Sleaford and North Hykeham by-election, Nigel Farage headed there today to do some broadcast in support of his party. Alas, the campaign banner he stood behind had a glaring error. It read ‘Hykenham’ rather than ‘Hykeham’. In future, Mr S suspects it’s worth double checking the spelling of the constituency before printing the campaign merchandise.

After being made Ukip leader yesterday, Paul Nuttall wasted no time in making it clear who he had in his sights: the Labour party. Nuttall said he wanted Ukip to ‘replace Labour’ within five years. And in its editorial, the Times says this threat spells a ‘nightmare’ scenario for Labour. The paper says that while ‘healing’ Ukip’s own ‘wounds’ won’t be easy following a fractious and divisive few months, ‘the rewards could be historic’; it says that a two per cent swing towards Ukip would lose Labour 13 seats, while Labour ‘would lose 19 more’ seats if one in five Labour voters sided with Nuttall’s party. But can Ukip pull it

Today Paul Nuttall has been appointed Ukip leader, winning over 62 pc of the vote. His election marks a new chapter for the party, after months of in-fighting and confusion since the Brexit vote. A popular figure in the party, many had hoped he would run in the first leadership election, that Diane James went on to win — before quitting after just 18 days. Better late than never, Nuttall now has a good chance of uniting the party behind him. In his acceptance speech, Nuttall wasted no time in setting out his vision for Ukip post-Brexit. He said he hoped ‘to replace the Labour party and make Ukip the patriotic

It’s not been a great week for Sir Kim Darroch. On Monday, he suffered the embarrassment of having the president-elect call for Nigel Farage to take his job. Now the interim Ukip leader has stuck the knife in further, giving an interview to Sam Delaney on Russia Today — natch — about the current UK ambassador to the US. Asked about his apparent job rival, Farage said he was unimpressed with Darroch when the pair previously met: ‘He once came to my office in Brussels and it was one of the most unpleasant conversations I’ve ever had.’ He also criticises Sir Kim’s pro-EU credentials for dealing with the Trump administration: ‘He