Nigel Farage
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| Nigel Farage MEP | |
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| In office 12 September 2006 – present |
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| Preceded by | Roger Knapman |
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| Succeeded by | Incumbent |
| Constituency | South East England |
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| Born | April 3, 1964 (age 43) Kent, England |
| Political party | United Kingdom Independence Party |
| Website | www.NigelFarageMEP.co.uk |
Nigel Paul Farage (born 3 April 1964 in Farnborough, Kent) is a British politician, and leader of the eurosceptic United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip). He is also a member of the European Parliament for South East England.
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[edit] Early life and career
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, and is now in partnership with his brother.
Active in the Conservative Party from his schooldays until the resignation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1990, he left the party in 1992 when John Major's government signed the Treaty on European Union at Maastricht. He became a founding member of UKIP in 1993 and has contested UK parliamentary elections for Ukip five times, retaining his deposit on every occasion. He was elected to the European Parliament in 1999 and re-elected in 2004. Farage is currently leader of the ten-member Ukip contingent in the European Parliament, and co-leader of the multinational eurosceptic group, Independence and Democracy. He also contested the Bromley & Chislehurst constituency during the May 2006 by-election, organised after the MP representing it, the eurosceptic Conservative Eric Forth, died. He scored third, winning 8% of the vote, thus beating the Labour candidate. This was the second-best by-election result recorded by UKIP out of 25 results.
Farage's wife is German [1] and they have four children.
[edit] Leader of UKIP
On 12 September 2006, Nigel Farage was elected leader of Ukip with 45% of the vote, 20% ahead of his nearest rival[2]. He pledged to bring discipline to the party and to maximise UKIP's representation in local, parliamentary and other elections. In a PM programme interview on BBC Radio 4 that day he pledged to end the public perception of Ukip as a single-issue party and to work with allied politicians in the Better Off Out Campaign, committing himself not to stand against the MPs who have signed up to that campaign (ten in all at this moment).
At his maiden speech to the Ukip conference on 8 October 2006, he told delegates that the party was "at the centre-ground of British public opinion" and the "real voice of opposition". Farage said: "We've got three social democratic parties in Britain -- Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative are virtually indistinguishable from each other on nearly all the main issues" and "you can't put a cigarette paper between them and that is why there are nine million people who don't vote now in general elections that did back in 1992." [3]
At 10 p.m. on 19 October 2006, Farage took part in a three-hour live interview and phone-in with James Whale on national radio station talkSPORT. Four days later, Whale announced on his show his intention to stand as Ukip's candidate in the 2008 London Mayoral Election. Farage said that Whale "not only has guts, but an understanding of what real people think". [4].
During his tenure as leader UKIP has made progress:
Parliamentary representation - two Conservative Lords (Lord Pearson and Lord Willoughby de Broke) defected to UKIP, and now represent that party; [5] they are its first Parliamentary representatives. All of these Lords are Tory defectors who claim David Cameron is a Europhile, and UKIP leaders plan to convince more Conservative peers to join the party.
Donors - The Conservative Party's #1 sponsor, Stuart Wheeler, has declared that UKIP 'could get his fortune'. However, the British Electoral Commission claims that a donation from another UKIP sponsor, Alan Bown, was illegal, and must be paid to the Government. Farage has complained the donation would make the party 'penniless'.
Opposition to the EU - The percentage of those who say they would vote for the EU constitution, although always small, has shrunk from 30% to merely 16%.
Popularity - According to most recent polls, 5% of the polled people say they would vote for UKIP. If the party scores so well during the next election, the result will be twice better than the 2005 electoral result (2.38% of votes).
[edit] Controversies and whistleblowing
[edit] Jacques Barrot controversy
On 18 November 2004, he announced in the European Parliament that Jacques Barrot, the French Commissioner designate, had been barred from elected office in France for 2 years, after being convicted in 2000 of embezzling £2 million from government funds and diverting it into the coffers of his party. He claimed that French President Jacques Chirac had granted Barrot amnesty. Although initial BBC reports claimed that, under French law, it was illegal even to mention the conviction [6], the prohibition in question only applies to French officials in the course of their duties [1]. The president of the Parliament, Josep Borrell, enjoined him to retract his comments under threat of "legal consequences" [7]. However, the following day it was confirmed that Barrot had received an 8 month suspended jail sentence in the case, and that this had been quickly expunged by the amnesty decided by Chirac and his parliamentary majority. The Commission's president, Jose Manuel Barroso admitted that he had not known of Barrot's criminal record when appointing him as a Commission vice-president.[8] The Socialist and Liberal groups in the European Parliament then joined UKIP in demanding the sacking of Barrot for failing to disclose the conviction during his confirmation hearings.
[edit] José Barroso controversy
During the spring of 2005, Farage requested that the European Commission disclose where the individual Commissioners had spent their holidays. The Commission did not provide the information requested, on the basis that the Commissioners had a right of privacy. The German newspaper Die Welt reported that the President of the European Commission, José Barroso had spent a week on the yacht of the Greek shipping billionaire Spiro Latsis. It emerged soon afterwards that this had occurred only a month before the Commission approved 10.3 million euro of Greek state aid for Latsis' shipping company.[9] It also became known that Peter Mandelson, a member of the Commission, had accepted a trip to Jamaica from an unrevealed source.[10]
Farage persuaded around 75 MEPs from across the political spectrum to back a motion of no confidence in Barroso, which would be sufficient to compel Barroso to appear before the European Parliament to be questioned on the issue.[11] The motion was successfully tabled on 12 May 2005, and Barroso appeared before Parliament [12] at a debate on 26 May 2005. The motion was heavily defeated. A Conservative MEP, Roger Helmer, was expelled from his group, the European People's Party - European Democrats (EPP-ED) in the middle of the debate by that group's leader Hans-Gert Poettering as a result of his support for Farage's motion.[13]
[edit] Joseph Daul controversy
In January 2007, the French farmers' leader Joseph Daul was elected the new leader of the European People's Party - European Democrats (EPP-ED), the European Parliamentary grouping which includes the British Conservatives. The UK Independence Party almost immediately revealed that Daul had been under judicial investigation in France since 2004 as part of an inquiry into the alleged misuse of public funds worth €16 million (£10.6 million) by French farming unions." [14]. It was not suggested that Daul had personally benefited, but is accuses of "complicity and concealment of the abuse of public funds." Daul accused Farage of publlicising the investigation for political reasons and threatened to sue Farage.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ The prohibition contained in the French penal code against mentioning crimes covered by an amnesty only concerns French officials who may hear of such crimes in the course of their duties (CP L133-11), and does not apply generally (L133-10).
[edit] Electoral performance
Farage has contested several elections under the United Kingdom Independence Party banner:
- Itchen, Test and Avon, European Parliament Election 1994 - 12,423 votes, representing 5.2% of total votes cast
- Eastleigh by-election, 1994 - 952, 1.4%
- Salisbury, 1997 general election - 3,332, 5.7%
- European Parliament Election 1999 - elected member for South East England from party list
- Bexhill and Battle, 2001 general election - 3,474, 7.8%
- European Parliament Election 2004 - elected member for South East England from party list
- South Thanet, 2005 general election - 2,079, 5.0%
- Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, 2006 - 2,307, 8.0%
In the 2006 Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, Farage came third, ahead of the Labour Party candidate. This was the first time in many years that a party in government had been pushed into fourth place in a parliamentary by-election.
[edit] External links
- Official website
- UKIP Bromley Farage's campaign website for the Bromley & Chislehurst by-election.
- Profile at European Parliament website
- Political group at the European Parliament http://indemgroup.org/
[edit] References
- James Whale of Talksport radio interviews the newly elected Leader of UKIP, Nigel Farage
- 2002 amnesty law
- Penal Code, articles L133-9, L133-10, L133-11
- United Kingdom Election Results
| Preceded by Roger Knapman |
Leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party 2006 – present |
Incumbent |
