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Who is Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK?
The Reform UK leader continues to be in the news as he leads the charge against looser immigration laws.
Nigel Farage is a name that you will likely hear a lot of around the UK election, and it’s probably because he’s shouting the loudest. The leader of Reform UK, a party that wants to “stand up for British culture, identity and values” by taking migrants in the Channel “back to France”.
Much of Reform UK’s policies and ideologies surround topics of immigration; in fact, it is the topic of the third paragraph in their manifesto, highlighting how much Farage believes that migrants who risk their lives for a safer way of living are one of the salient problems in a country that has been brought to a halt by Tory rule for 15 years.
Nigel’s early life
Anyway, onto Nigel himself. Born Nigel Paul Farage in Kent, southeast England, his father was a stockbroker and as such, he lived a middle-class life, attending a fee-paying private school before moving to Dulwich College in South London.
It was here that Nigel’s world view came to the forefront of his personality: Chloe Deakin, a teacher at the school, “begged the master of the college (head teacher), David Emms, to reconsider his decision to appoint Farage as a prefect”. A letter revealed by Channel 4 noted Farage to be “a fascist” and “described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views” with “Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”
Farage’s response was as follows: “Of course I said some ridiculous things, not necessarily racist things. It depends how you define it”.
Farage’s political career
He worked for various banking groups after leaving school before joining the Conservative Party in 1978, leaving in 1992. A year later he founded the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), where he asked former politician and staunch right-winger Enoch Powell for support, who declined.
Until 2006 Farage worked to increase the popularity of his party’s ideology before becoming leader. He stepped down to focus on being an MP on various occasions but always came back to the leadership role (2006 to 2009 and again from 2010 to 2016), the limelight and microphone stands were too enticing.
It was here, in 2016, with the advent of Brexit, where he made a true voice for himself, arguing against the European Union and how much Britain would benefit from leaving (side note: Farage’s wife is German-born and his two of his children have German passports).
A member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2020, Farage had long argued against the benefits of a continent-wide community that offered higher environmental standards, free trade, free movement, a right to education and living, shared scientific research, a single market, more cultural diversity, and higher levels of investment.
His speeches and propaganda worked, and Britain left the EU. Years later, there is no plan to re-join, the international community simply chuckle at the small island in the North Sea, promises on borders, fishing, ‘taking back control’ and immigrants have all fizzed into thin air, and it would not be controversial to say that a large majority of the people who voted Brexit in the first place would like to rethink their stance.
Finally, with his propaganda complete, in December 2018, 25 years after joining, Farage stepped away from UKIP. It was here when he founded the Brexit Party which was rebranded to Reform UK. They are now, thanks to the Tory implosion, reportedly set to become the second most popular party in the UK on the July 4th election. And Farage is still as loud as ever.
Nigel Farage was an advocate for Donald Trump to receive a Nobel Peace Prize for his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, and claims of Russian interference in the general election campaign to give Reform UK support are “gravely concerning”, the deputy prime minister recently told Sky News, adding that Moscow reportedly using Facebook bots “is a classic example from the Russian playbook”.
Farage has repeatedly been labelled a Putin apologist, and was recently criticised by both Rishi Sunak and Kier Starmer for his comments on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.