UK election race gets exciting, Brexit champion Nigel Farage to contest

Nigel Farage has evolved from a fringe eurosceptic rabble-rouser to an attention-grabbing figurehead who hopes to “reshape” right-wing UK politics. On Monday, Farage announced his eighth attempt to become a British MP.

The 60-year-old former member of the European Parliament (MEP) was instrumental in the Brexit referendum that took place in Britain in 2016. More recently, he launched a career as a presenter on the new right-wing TV network GB News.

Farage, who was dubbed “Mr Brexit” by the former US president, is a loud admirer of Donald Trump and is equally hated and loved in the UK.

Regarded as one of the most proficient orators and activists in Britain, Nigel Farage’s choice to contest in the general election on July 4 from a euroskeptic seat in Clacton, southeast England, presents a unique danger to the beleaguered ruling Conservatives.

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In addition, he made a sharp U-turn after first declaring he would not run for office as an MP again.

This is his eighth unsuccessful effort to run for office in the UK parliament.

The populist Reform UK, running on a pro-Brexit, anti-immigration, and anti-net-zero platform that threatens to sway right-wing support away from the Conservatives, will benefit greatly from Farage’s candidacy.

That could help the main Labour opposition, which polls show is on course to win the election, and leave Farage in a powerful position in its aftermath.

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Alternatively, if Labour underperforms expectations, he could become a potential kingmaker in horse-trading for a coalition government.

Farage told the Sunday Times that, in the long term, he aims to stage a “takeover” of the Conservatives, likening his bid to 1990s-era efforts to remould Canada’s Conservative Party.

On paper, Nigel Paul Farage is an improbable populist—a beer-loving, divorced father of four whose father worked as a stockbroker—because he seems to represent much of what he criticizes.

The 20-year Brussels MEP, a former commodities trader with private education, frequently attacked “career politicians” and “the global elite” while railing against the EU, which provided his pay.

Applauded by his fans as a straightforward, beer-drinking “everyman,” his detractors charge him of being a hypocrite who panders to far-right fanatics and racists.

However, Farage has a remarkable talent for drawing attention from the media by taking advantage of right-wing voters’ anger with the way Brexit has been handled.

In 1985 he had a cancerous testicle removed, and was hit by a car after a night out in 1987, suffering serious head and leg injuries.

Once recovered, he married his nurse, and the couple had two sons.

Following their divorce in 1997, Farage married second wife Kirsten Mehr, a German, with whom he has two daughters. They separated in 2017.

On general election day in May 2010, a light aircraft he was in crashed after a campaign banner got caught in a propeller.

He escaped relatively unscathed with just broken bones and a punctured lung.

Farage’s political ascent began in 1993 when Britain, under the ruling Conservatives, joined in a process of deeper European integration.

He quit the Tories in disgust to co-found the eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) and six years later won election to the European Parliament aged 35.

Farage had two stints leading UKIP, pulling off an unprecedented win in the 2014 European Parliament elections, while also making seven failed bids to become a British MP over the years.

The 2014 results heaped pressure on then-prime minister David Cameron to call the European Union membership referendum that would eventually seal his demise.

Farage was kept out of the official Leave campaign in the run-up to the Brexit referendum. Leave feared his brand was too divisive.

But he maintained a high profile, hammering away at the immigration issue – and sparking enduring criticism by unveiling a poster of refugees under the slogan “breaking point”.

In the afterglow of victory, Farage stepped down as UKIP leader, claiming his mission was complete.

But he soon returned to frontline politics, founding the Brexit Party in response to the political paralysis around leaving the EU and then helping rebrand it as Reform following the UK’s eventual withdrawal in 2020.

(With agency inputs)