Nigel Farage, Who Spurred ‘Brexit,’ Resigns as Head of U.K. Independence Party
Nigel Farage Addresses Resignation
Nigel Farage said on Monday that he was resigning from his position as the leader of the right-wing U.K. Independence Party.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish Date July 5, 2016.
Photo by Peter Nicholls/Reuters.
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LONDON — He spent nearly 20 years pushing for Britain to leave the European Union, and having succeeded in his aim, he is now taking his leave.
Nigel
Farage, the politician who probably did more than any other to force
the referendum on British membership in the European Union, resigned on
Monday as leader of the right-wing populist U.K. Independence Party,
saying, “I’ve done my bit.”
Mr.
Farage, 52, has quit the post before — twice. But on Monday he sounded
as if he meant it this time, telling reporters that “my political
ambition has been achieved” and that “I want my life back.”
But
since the “Brexit” vote he has also been encouraged to quit by Arron
Banks, the self-made insurance millionaire who has been a main funder of
the party, known as UKIP, and of the unofficial Leave.EU campaign, and who sees the possibility of a more broadly based political party that can appeal to disaffected Labour voters.
Mr.
Farage — brash, outspoken, loquacious and divisive, a commodities
broker turned politician who loves widely striped suits and large
glasses of beer — was probably not the man to lead the new party beyond
its current limits. In a recent interview with the Financial Times over lunch, he consumed three pints of beer, half a bottle of wine and a glass of port.
But
his push for a referendum, first as a member of the European Parliament
and then as the leader of UKIP, arguing that Britain could manage
immigration and regain full sovereignty only from outside the European
Union, struck a deep chord with many Britons. It fed into the
euroskeptic wing of the Conservative Party and made many Conservative
legislators fear that UKIP would deny them an election victory in 2015.
In the end, UKIP got 13 percent of the vote but only one seat in Britain’s electoral system, and Mr. Cameron won a surprising majority. But he did so having promised this referendum, which he lost.
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Even
within UKIP, Mr. Farage was not universally loved. Internal critics
complained of an inability to delegate, and his rivalry with the more
cerebral Douglas Carswell, UKIP’s only member of Britain’s Parliament,
developed into guerrilla warfare. On Monday, Mr. Carswell greeted Mr.
Farage’s resignation announcement by posting on Twitter a smiling emoji
wearing sunglasses.
Mr.
Farage specialized in a blunt political discourse that appealed both to
right-wing conservatives and to those who felt left behind in an
increasingly polarized country.
Opponents frequently accused him of racism and xenophobia, most recently just before the referendum when he unveiled a poster
depicting refugees at the Croatian border under the slogan “Breaking
Point.” Mr. Farage denied the charge and responded that he was the real
“victim” of abuse.
The
vote to quit the bloc was an enormous and unexpected victory for Mr.
Farage, a politician who delights in his own lack of political
correctness, discipline and bland sound bites. He infuriated others in the European Parliament last week,
telling them that they were “in denial” and gloating over the victory,
which he saw as a blow by “little people” against the elite.
WHAT IS 'BREXIT'?
The decision by British voters to exit the European Union. The formal process for doing so has not begun, as power struggles have consumed both of Britain's major political parties.WHAT IS THE E.U., AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
It is an economic and political union of 28 nations, intended to deliver peace, stability and prosperity.- The European Council, made up of national leaders, sets the overall political agenda but it cannot pass laws.
- Laws are proposed by the Council of the European Union — ministers from the member governments — and by the European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, which has extensive regulatory powers.
- The laws are approved (or rejected) by the 751-member European Parliament, which is elected directly by European citizens.
As
they mocked him, he responded: “Isn’t it funny? When I came here 17
years ago and I said that I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to
leave the European Union, you all laughed at me. Well, I have to say,
you’re not laughing now, are you? The reason you’re so upset, you’re so
angry, has been perfectly clear, from all the angry exchanges this
morning.
“You
as a political project are in denial. You’re in denial that your
currency is failing. Just look at the Mediterranean! As a policy to
impose poverty on Greece and the Mediterranean you’ve done very well,”
he said, then went on in that vein, both angry and smug.
But
his claim to be an anti-establishment figure was never convincing.
Educated at Dulwich College, a famous and expensive private day school
for boys in south London, he skipped college to become a commodities
trader.
In
a 2010 memoir, “Fighting Bull” (updated in paperback as “Flying Free”),
he described his years of making money during the day and drinking hard
at night, and his various adventures with women, marriage and divorce.
He survived testicular cancer in his 20s and, later, a serious accident
when a light aircraft he was in crashed.
Mr.
Farage became involved in the campaign to extract Britain from the
European Union in the early 1990s, but the UKIP he joined soon found
itself competing with another, better-financed group, the Referendum
Party.
In
Britain’s 1997 general election, UKIP won just 0.3 percent of the vote.
But the prospects of Mr. Farage and his party were immeasurably helped
when the European Union forced Britain to adopt more proportional voting
in elections for the European Parliament.
In
1999, Mr. Farage won one of three UKIP seats in the European
Parliament, where he has stayed ever since, and where he has used the
generous expense allowances for legislators to promote his party and
himself.
Despite
his innate English nationalism, Mr. Farage always seemed at home in
Brussels, where he would frequent the bars of Place du Luxembourg, or in
Strasbourg, France, the home of the European Parliament, where UKIP
held regular, alcohol-fueled dinners in what was known as the “gadfly
club.”
Mr.
Farage employed his German-born second wife, Kirsten Mehr, as his
assistant, and has acknowledged expense and allowance claims of some 2
million pounds, in the neighborhood of $3 million, since his election to
the Parliament.
None
of which prevented him from pummeling the institutions or its
representatives, most notably the former president of the European
Council, Herman Van Rompuy, whose appointment he greeted with the sort
of polemic seldom heard in the rarefied debates of the European
Parliament.
In what was to become a YouTube hit,
Mr. Farage told Mr. Van Rompuy to his face in 2010 that he had “the
charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk.”
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By
then Mr. Farage, who was elected UKIP leader in 2006, had already
resigned once — after the European Parliament elections in 2009, in
which UKIP won 13 seats with 16.5 percent of the vote.
The
plan was to run for the British Parliament in 2010, but Mr. Farage
lost, and on the day of the election nearly lost his life in the
aircraft accident.
He
tried again in the 2015 British election but failed again, even as UKIP
nationally won almost four million votes. In the immediate
disappointment of that failure he quit the party leadership, only to
reverse his decision, claiming, to some ridicule, that this was by
popular demand.
During
the recent referendum campaign, he was kept out of the official Leave
campaign amid fears that his focus on immigration might deter
middle-of-the-road voters. But migration became a dominant issue for all
the senior figures who argued for British withdrawal from the European
Union, a vindication of sorts for Mr. Farage.
“Love
him or loathe him — and many people do — it is simply a fact that we
would not have had the referendum vote, nor have won it, without him,”
said Gawain Towler, a longtime ally and spokesman for UKIP.
No
one else had a similar reach among voters in poorer, postindustrial
areas that had traditionally voted for the opposition Labour Party, Mr.
Towler added.
Under
Mr. Farage, UKIP transformed itself from a right-wing rump into an
insurgent populist force, switching its focus from support among groups
such as ex-military personnel in the affluent south to the left-behind
towns of the east coast and the north of England.
UKIP’s
support, he has said, is now to be found in areas with “ordinary people
who get up at 6 in the morning, commute to work, pay their mortgages
and do their best to bring their kids up.”
Last
month, millions of those people listened more to Mr. Farage than to the
mainstream political leaders, precipitating a referendum result that,
just a few years ago, seemed inconceivable.
And
today, with Mr. Cameron announcing his resignation, the Conservatives
competing to see who is the most loyal to Brexit and the Labour Party in
chaos — with little to say about immigration — UKIP or a party built on
its foundations has an open door for more support.
“During
the referendum campaign, I said I want my country back,” Mr. Farage
said on Monday. “What I’m saying today is I want my life back, and it
begins right now.”
Not
quite. Mr. Farage said he intended to keep his Parliament seat in
Strasbourg until Britain finally left the European Union, just to ensure
that there was no backsliding — and undoubtedly to keep annoying the
other legislators by his very presence.
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Related Coverage
‘Brexit’: Britain’s Decision to Leave the E.U.
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