The Interview : Nigel Farage

The Interview: Nigel Farage, former Ukip leader turned shock jock

“Run again? Never say never. It depends what Theresa May does with Brexit”

The last time Nigel Farage was in the Zafferano restaurant, one of the better Italians in central London, it was the day of the EU referendum. “It was raining. We kept willing it to rain even harder to keep the ‘remainiacs’ at home,” he recalls.

Farage’s dining partner that day was Arron Banks, the insurance tycoon who had bankrolled the more anarchic of the two Leave campaigns. Banks was certain of victory. Farage was undergoing one of his periodic bouts of self-doubt. “I was sinking into a bit of gloom. On polling day you think it’s all over. With about two weeks to go I felt very confident. With a week to go I was surrounded with euphoria. At that moment I thought we really might win by quite a bit. But then the Jo Cox tragedy just stopped everything.”

The Sunday Times, January 29 2017

In the end the killing of an MP by an extreme nationalist who wanted to put “Britain first” did not derail Brexit, but it did damage Farage’s standing with those who decried the tone of his campaign. At the time he bristled with defensive indignation.

Today he looks different. He’s still got the froglike grin, but the skin is more tanned. The dominant impression is of insouciance, not furious urgency. It is the patina of victory. It has been a long time coming, after two decades of pushing euroscepticism in cold town halls and working men’s clubs.

With the referendum victory secured, Farage, 52, declared he wanted his life back. But he has hardly stopped since. He’s friends with the president of the United States and newly installed as LBC radio’s latest host. He’s also still an MEP. It’s hardly surprising he is “bloody shattered”. He says he has not been drinking. “You’ve got to have a break if you’re a regular drinker,” he says. This is to stretch the limits of the word “regular” to breaking point. I face the prospect of interrogating the man who invented the “PFL” (proper fucking lunch) without the usual stimulants. But as I sit down, Farage winces. “I’m in so much pain, I could do with a glass of something. My bloody back is giving me hell.” I order a medicinal bottle of barbera.

Golden moment: celebrating Donald Trump’s election victory at Trump Tower, 

New York, on November 12, 2016

The back pain is a hangover (as it were) from a light-aircraft accident during the 2010 general election campaign. He was lucky to survive. He had “major reconstructive surgery” in November 2013. He’s not a good patient. “I’ve not been doing the sort of osteo stuff I should be doing.” 

And all those flights to America can’t be helping either. Farage disagrees. “Going to America’s fine because you’re in business class.” He laughs like a braying donkey, so loud it seems false. But, like Boris Johnson, he’s just playing the best role he knows — himself — to the max.

I’m a few minutes late, a consequence of London’s public-transport system. Farage’s security team don’t let him take the Tube. “I’m banned,” he blurts. He gets death threats, in sufficient volume and of sufficient seriousness that the police are involved. “I get more than most,” he says, irritation and pride vying in his voice.

Getting his life back has not meant more quality time with his wife and children. “A bit, but not hugely. I’m very limited in terms of what I can do and where I can go. Can’t go out for dinner. I’m quite limited unless I’ve got security with me. The vast majority of people who come and talk to you are friendly. But if people don’t like you and they’ve had a drink, they can get pretty aggressive. You have drinks thrown at you. You live with that. But clearly some people pose a bigger threat. Getting back to any kind of normality is difficult.”

He blames a culture of cosseting the young. “I’m afraid something has really gone wrong with our younger generation and their attitude towards politics. Older people understand and respect the fact that other people have different points of view. Younger people think the view they and their peers hold is the only view that should be allowed. Everyone outside of that is mad and bad and should be shut down.”

Just after we speak, it is reported that he is living in a bachelor pad in London during the week. He denies his marriage to the German-born Kirsten, his second wife, is in difficulties. “We get by and bumble along, like most people,” he says. The couple have two daughters, aged 16 and 11. He has two older sons by his first wife.

With his sons, “we go out and fish”. With the daughters, “we’ll try and get them out walking”. He concedes his children have had a hard time from their peers. “Obviously this has impacted on their lives in a big way. Without elaborating, it’s been very difficult.”

Did his children agree with him on Brexit? “I’m not going to speak for them.” Do they have family chats about Brexit? “I think they’ve heard enough from me to want to have debates around the kitchen table.”

I ask if he thinks he has been a poor husband and father. He appeals to me, as another political lifer, for understanding. “Look, we’re in this game. It’s like our form of being on drugs, isn’t it really? It’s what we do. It’s who we are. If the phone rings at 11 o’clock at night — and that’s not unusual — we pick it up and answer it. And does that impact? Well, it just means that family, relationships, children, are different. It doesn’t actually necessarily mean they’re bad. It just means they’re different. I don’t think just because I’ve worked hard I’d feel bad about that and the impact on the family. I think because of what their surname is and because I’ve been seen to be this extreme controversialist — which I reject — that, I feel a bit more guilty about.”

The one bright spot for Farage is the ascent of his new bezzie, The Donald, to the leadership of the free world. He thinks Trump will give Britain a trade deal and fast. “People who exist on private money tend to be in a rush, tend to want to get things done. That’s what we will see with Trump. We will see an incredible can-do attitude. It’s really exciting. He has a good sense of humour, he’s good with people and he’s got the constitution of a bloody ox.”

When they had that infamous meeting behind the golden doors of the president-elect’s apartment in Trump Tower, even Farage — the Duracell bunny of British politics — was awed by his new buddy’s ability to do six campaign events a day, and by his generosity. “He had the whole world knocking on his door. In the middle of all that he had that much time for us.”

Farage professes not to believe the lurid claims, in a recently leaked dossier, that Russia has compromising material on Trump. But he does concede that Trump may have been naive about the way Moscow sought to woo him over the years. “He could be. He could be. But then, as I say, how many elections have America interfered in all over the world since 1945?”

On the need to do business with Vladimir Putin, he’s on the same page as Trump. “It’s very stupid of the West to wilfully, deliberately provoke Putin. We mishandled Ukraine in the most stunning way.” Farage has heard talk of an early Trump summit with the Russian president. “Should he go meet Putin? Of course.”

Should Trump now get off Twitter? “What he should do and what he’s going to do are two entirely different things. He’s not going to change.”

The same might be said of Farage. He wanted to get his life back, but the lure of politics has proved too strong. The frustration for him is that Theresa May has no interest in using him as an official intermediary with the new administration in Washington.

“I could play a huge role in this, but you know, they’d rather not do the job properly than use me. I’ve made it very clear to them through the right channels that I’d like to help. Wouldn’t want paying, wouldn’t want anything. They don’t want to know.”

So, for now, he is building a portfolio career. This political troubadour and talk-radio host has been signed up as pundit on Fox News and will also be making paid speeches in the US to capitalise on his new fame. He is embarked on a midlife process of self-improvement. “I want to keep on developing as a person, learning to do other things. Writing, stuff like that.” He’s working on a book about “2016: the year that changed everything and what it means for modern democracy in the West”.

There’s also the prospect of a film about him. Warner Brothers is talking to Arron Banks about adapting his book on the referendum campaign. But who would play Farage? “I’ve got to do it, obviously,” he says with a grin.

Getting his life back hasn’t meant resigning from the spotlight, but he does want to try a different sort of politics — and that’s why he agreed to anchor a regular weekday show at 7pm on LBC. “There are more ways of doing opinion shifting than conventional politics. I’ve seen the impact of talk radio in America. It’s absolutely bloody massive. And it’s growing here.” He denies he is joining the ranks of arch controversialist “shock jocks” like Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones: “I’m not a shock jock.” Instead he regards it as a personal test. “I want to try and prove to myself that I’ve got a skill set that is broader than what I’ve been doing. But in terms of politics and current affairs, I see it as a fantastic opportunity to keep pushing agendas very, very hard.”

Farage wants to use his new platform to campaign to reduce the number of people going (pointlessly, he reckons) to university. “We’re underskilling in this country by sending too many people to do academic degrees. I just don’t get it.” He will back May’s plan for the expansion of grammar schools. He’ll also say what many regard as unsayable about the NHS. He admires the French system of charging for GP access, fining those who don’t turn up for appointments, more insurance and private provision of services. “We need to have this debate, but — do you know something? — the country simply isn’t ready for it.”

Farage brings it back to his favourite subject: immigration. “The PM boasts that Boxing Day was the busiest day in the history of the NHS. Well, of course it fucking was. That’s because the population is going up by half a million people every year.”

This is the conundrum of Nigel Farage. He revels in saying things other politicians regard as unsayable, and yet at another level he’s desperate to be seen as reasonable. “I’m not some sort of extreme, way-out political figure,” he says. “Far from it. Far from it. To have been categorised as such is frankly outrageous.” Like Trump, he employs repetition as a rhetorical device.

I ask Farage, who was once dismissed by Russell Brand as a “pound-shop Enoch Powell”, if he ever feels queasy about the far-right associations of some of those who follow him. He says his critics should be grateful that his stewardship of Ukip helped marginalise the British National Party. When he became leader in 2006, “they were beating us in election after election and a lot of people said we should do a deal”. Instead he persuaded BNP voters that Ukip would represent their concerns so they did not have to resort to neo-fascist parties. “I’ve done 100 times more to dent the far right than Peter Hain or anyone else.”

Farage appears to have outgrown Ukip. He claims he wants to give his successor, Paul Nuttall, space to succeed. “I have to leave it alone. I can’t be seen to be in the way, that would be a disaster.” His focus at the moment is on working with Banks, who has launched a website, Westmonster.com, to mobilise the million-plus supporters on his Leave.EU mailing list to oust MPs that Banks sees as the most corrupt or lazy.

It had been assumed that Farage would front this enterprise, but he is rather sceptical. “Big self-made businessmen love to chuck ideas around. Boom, boom, boom. And the next morning they’ve forgotten they said it. Trump and Arron are similar in this regard.”

Farage, it seems, thinks Ukip might still be the best vehicle for him. “Don’t underestimate the power of the Ukip brand. Arron can talk about new political parties, but Ukip has way too much value to even think about that at this time.” He says he will give Nuttall “considerable support and muscle” to professionalise the party. “That’s when I’ll get back on the Ukip scene.”

Does that mean he is already planning a fourth spell as leader? “I wouldn’t need to be leader, but what I could do is start touring the country again and doing the big town hall meetings. I’m not ruling that out.” He’s so keen to return to hostilities that he even claims he would turn down the peerage that many of his supporters think he should be offered. “I wouldn’t want that right now, because I haven’t ruled out getting back properly into the fray of frontline politics. I don’t think the House of Lords is where you spearhead national populist campaigns. It’s not going to be the red benches for me. I’ve got to keep my options open.”

DAVID VINTINER FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE

Perhaps a knighthood then? “Well, I haven’t worked in the civil service, have I? The Establishment really don’t like me. I’m the outsider, aren’t I? Simple as that.”

Farage draws life from this view of himself as others ingest oxygen. “I wasn’t brought up to be an outsider. I became an outsider. I chose to be because of the direction things went in.” His self-worth is fuelled by a belief, common in some politicians, that their legitimacy flows directly from the people. As if on cue, we are interrupted by a manager from a leading supermarket who says he was the only Brexiteer in his office and that he watches Farage speeches on YouTube. “If we’d been sat outside, we’d have had a dozen of them,” Farage says.

Despite the adoration, the small matter of never becoming an MP seems like an itch Farage still wants to scratch. He has run seven times for parliament unsuccessfully, most recently in South Thanet, where Tory election spending to stop him is now the subject of a legal investigation. He has not ruled out running for parliament again. “Never say never. It depends really on what she does with Brexit.”

“She” is Theresa May and the threat is implied but clear: get the kind of Brexit Farage wants or he’ll be back to cause more mischief. “She’s terribly good at being reassuring. Very good. It’s just that her track record’s so poor from the time of home secretary. It’s the lack of flair that worries me.

“If we finish up with a Norway-style deal, if we end up with something we haven’t voted for, and if May’s popularity is lukewarmish, and if Corbyn’s having a mare with Labour, then there could be a very exciting electoral opportunity with Ukip.” If I were Nuttall, I’d be wondering whether I was just keeping the seat warm for a couple of years.

Farage thinks 2017 is going to anger Brexiteers. “The American revolution is complete because not only has Trump won, but he has the power to appoint his own people and they’re brand new and outside the box. In this country, with the exception of Cameron and Osborne, exactly the same people have just been shuffled around the chessboard. Do I think it’s going to be painfully slow? Yes. Do I think 2017 is probably going to be a deeply frustrating year for Brexiteers? I really do.”

It is clear he has no plans to relax. “I love working. I’m very bad when I’m idle.” What does “very bad” mean? “The wrong kind of behaviour. I’m very prone to all the vices of gambling and drinking.” He loves a flutter on the horses and the financial markets.

“If I wasn’t working, I think I’d be idling my days away at Sandown Park with bad company. But I like work and I genuinely feel I can reach out to a lot of people. I can make people think. And just sometimes perhaps tweak their opinions a bit.”

Far from getting his life back, Nigel Farage is living the only life he has ever known.