Nigel Farage

File:Nigel Farage.png

Nigel Farage

Nigel Paul Farage (born 3 April 1964) is a British political commentator and former politician who served as Leader (September 2006 to Nov 2009; Nov 2010 till June 2016) of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) of which he was a founder member in 1993. He served as their Member of the European Parliament for South East England from 1999 until the United Kingdom's exit from the EU in 2020.

He was the host of The Nigel Farage Show, a radio phone-in on the Global-owned talk radio station LBC, from 2017 to 2020. Farage is currently the Honorary President of Reform UK and a presenter for GB Radio News.

Background

Farage was educated at Dulwich College before joining a commodity brokerage firm in London. He ran his own brokerage business from the early 1990s until 2002. He has been married twice. He married Gráinne Hayes in 1988, with whom he had two children: Samuel (1989) and Thomas (1991). They were subsequently divorced and in 1999 he remarried Kirsten Mehr, a German national, by whom he has two more children, Victoria (born 2000) and Isabelle (born 2005).

Farage has also penned his own memoirs, entitled "Fighting Bull." It outlines the founding of UKIP and his personal and political life so far.

Political history

After becoming leader of the UKIP on 12th September 2006, he led the party through the 2009 European elections when it won the second-highest share of the UK popular vote, with over 2 million votes. He stepped down in November 2009 to focus on contesting Buckingham, the Westminster constituency of the then Speaker, John Bercow, MP, at the 2010 General Election, and came third. (Buckingham is a 100% safe Conservative Party seat.) A year after standing down Farage successfully stood in the November 2010 UKIP leadership contest becoming leader once again after Malcolm, Lord Pearson, voluntarily stepped down. Farage was ranked second in The Daily Telegraph's Top 100 most influential 'right-wingers'[sic] poll in 2013, behind Prime Minister David Cameron [sic]. Farage was named "Briton of the Year" by The Times in 2014. In the 2014 European Elections, the UKIP won 24 seats, the first time a party other than Labour or Conservative had won the largest number of seats in a national election since the December 1910 general election.

In the 2015 General Election, the UKIP secured over 3.8 million votes and 12.6% of the total vote, replacing the Liberal Democrats as the third most popular party, but due to the archaic and undemocratic British electoral system scandalously secured only one seat in Parliament. the results, on top of the EU elections the previous year, nevertheless forced Cameron to call a UK-wide national referendum on EU membership.

Farage announced his resignation when he did not win the South Thanet Westminster parliamentary seat, but his resignation was rejected and he remained as leader of the UKIP. He was a prominent figure in the successful campaign for Brexit in the 2016 EU membership referendum. After the successful and clear vote to leave the EU, Farage resigned as leader of UKIP, but remained as an MEP. In December 2018, Farage resigned from UKIP, and launched the Brexit Party in 2019, badly undermining his old party and splitting loyalties. The Brexit Party won the most votes in the May 2019 European elections, briefly becoming the largest single UK party in the European Parliament.

The Euro and finance

From taking office as a UKIP MEP in 1999, Farage has often voiced opposition to the "Euro project". His argument is that "a one size fits all interest rate" cannot work for countries with structurally different economies, often using the example of Greece and Germany to emphasise contrast. He predicted the need for 'bailouts' before European Commission and European Central Bank officials admitted that these steps would be necessary. Specifically, Farage predicted that Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain would all require such assistance. To date, Spain is the only predicted country that has not asked for a 'bailout'. Although Spain and Italy have both had indirect assistance from the ECB, whereby secondary government bonds are bought by the central bank, they are prohibited from purchasing new bonds. Farage warns: "You can ignore the markets if you want to, but in time the markets will not ignore you". Farage also reinforces Germany's argument that Italy "should never have joined the euro".

Farage strongly opposes the use of 'bailouts' and claims that "buying your own debt with tax payers money" will not solve the problem and that, "if we do, the next debt crisis won't be a country", "it will be the European Central Bank itself".

References

• 2002 Amnesty law
• Penal Code, articles L133-9, L133-10, L133-11

External links

• Nigel Farage MEP Official website

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