Nigel Farage: Man Of The Moment

“How would you describe your perfect Sunday?” I could hardly believe it: sitting opposite a man heavily influential in modern politics, who bases his life around topics he feels passionately about, and whose views are gaining more public acknowledgement, appreciation and support by the minute… And there I was, asking Nigel Farage about his dream weekend.

It was the final question in what The Huffington Post would later describe as “a sensational interview” while Pink News and The Christian Institute both went on to highlight Farage’s contentious remarks regarding gay marriage. But discussing his perfect Sunday proved a whimsical end to what was an extensive, controversial and enthralling encounter.

“Well, the perfect Sunday has to involve lunchtime drinking at a proper English pub – although with the smoking ban no pub is proper really,” Farage chortled assuredly. “Hopefully one would get out fishing in the afternoon for a couple of hours as I enjoy that enormously. Not just the catching of them; I like the cooking of them and the preparing of them. Somewhere inside this suit there is a man, the Hunter-gatherer, desperate to break out.”

It was a charming reply to my question asked on the roof of the European Commission headquarters in Smith Square. It was perhaps ironic that Farage would propose we meet at an institution which he despises – indeed over £5 million has been spent revamping this building where, under Tory ownership, the late Baroness Thatcher engineered her greatest electoral triumphs. Bomb-proof windows, a landscaped roof terrace and luxury offices: finally I was able to see exactly where the taxpayers’ cash ends up.

We decided to set up camp on the roof, identifying a rather apt opportunity to have the Union Flag of Westminster swishing in the gentle wind directly behind Farage’s nationalistic head. It immediately became evident that he was on a very tight schedule – with a press conference on the Syrian conflict in just 30 minutes. After all, with his party hitting 26 percent in the local elections this summer – and with one in four UK voters supportive of his views according to one recent poll – he’s bound to be swamped by the media wherever he goes.

But even so, his party is still widely regarded as a one-issue pressure group, with the European Union taking the title role in the overwhelming majority of UKIP related discussions. And it was on this topic I began the interview, questioning Farage’s comments earlier in the year that UKIP is “here to stay.”

“If the country votes to leave the EU, what purpose will UKIP have?” I asked. “Ah now that’s day one of a new beginning,” he proclaimed. “Voting to leave the EU is the beginning of the opportunity to revive Britain: I think that’s when things really kick off. Over the past couple of years UKIP has evolved from being a party that talks not just about who governs Britain, but how Britain should be governed,” he said, crossing his legs, leaning back and becoming ever more relaxed – we were debating very familiar territory, of course. “Much of what we talk about are things that can only be done outside the EU. I really do believe UKIP is here to stay.”

“But if the country votes to remain in the European Union–” I couldn’t even finish my question. “Absolutely no chance of that!” he laughed it off. “–would you continue to campaign against the will of the majority of the public?” I pressed him for an answer. But Farage was having none of it: “Even if, in some weird circumstance, the referendum was lost, no free people ever willingly give up the right to govern themselves. The idea that a referendum could stop us wanting to be democratic is just ridiculous.”

Farage told me he sees no advantages whatsoever of being part of an intergovernmental amalgamation, and quoted Norman Lamont who failed to see a single benefit the UK could not achieve through “normal bilateral negotiations.” Indeed Farage, who described the first President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, as having the “charisma of a damp rag” and Belgium as “pretty much a non-country” loathes nothing more than the EU itself. It would be fair to suggest he is generally considered right-wing, but Farage indicated he doesn’t see a left-to-right political spectrum in “any traditional sense,” or indeed at all: “I think you would probably call us classical liberal,” he chuckled.

But Edinburgh protesters labelled Farage a “racist scumbag” earlier this year, and UKIP’s original founder recently suggested the party has become “extraordinarily right-wing, not intellectually serious, and morally dodgy.” I put those comments to him and proposed he should consider toning down his policies. Farage, though, slammed the UKIP founder and former leader, branding him a “fully up paid member of the bitter and twisted club.”

“Will anybody watching this video have ever heard of his name? When he was leading the party none cared who he was,” Farage bellowed. “I haven’t spoken to him in 17 years. Who is he? I don’t respond to anything he says.”

Clearly, Farage intends to distance himself from the party’s history and make UKIP all about the present. Yet with the ongoing risk of allowing all publicity and attention to surround himself – and therefore no room for other influential UKIP names – surely the pressure will begin to mount. “Isn’t UKIP all about you?” I queried bluntly, to which his reply was, again, stern: “We’re not a football team; we can’t pay to import foreign players. Anyone who follows politics closely will be aware that Stuart Wheeler is an extremely well-known figure. Diane James has appeared for us on many things…”

Ah yes, the lady who lost a by-election and in return was given boundless media coverage. The BBC in particular went barmy, throwing her on two Question Time episodes just weeks after failing to become a backbench MP. I asked whether more media coverage is positive for the party. “Well, when someone says we’re a one man party, it’s better than being a no-man party. At least people know who I am and what I stand for.”

He conceded the public want to see a team of people who are capable of being in power – “perhaps a coalition government after 2015,” he hinted. “Political parties have to evolve and we’re heading in the right direction.”

Controversy, however, frequently attends those associated with UKIP. The now-independent Yorkshire MEP Godfrey Bloom resigned from UKIP after calling women at the latest party conference “sluts.” And that came just two months after Bloom was recorded saying: “How we can possibly be giving £1 billion a month, when we’re in this sort of debt, to Bongo Bongo Land is completely beyond me.” Indeed, in my subsequent interview with Bloom we debated these comments in depth.

Surely, though, this kind of behaviour creates problems for Farage. “We can’t have people bounding off on things that are deeply offensive,” the UKIP leader confessed. “I still want us to be a party that has free speech. I have to keep it in the bounds of sanity and credibility.”

I wanted to know Farage’s position on remarks made by previous UKIP Chief Executive Will Gilpin, who quit after just eight months in the job, criticising Farage for obstinately refusing to relax his influence and power. UKIP’s failure to adopt a more professional management system means it will remain “a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs having a good time,” Gilpin had warned. “Well I think he got it entirely wrong,” Farage said, branding the criticism “unjust and invalid.”

“Perhaps the mistake I’ve made is to devolve too much power over the course of the last few years, to many people who have proved they’ve not been up to scratch.” Rather innocent, then. “Am I happy that the treasurer of the party Stuart Wheeler takes a different view tome on the Human Rights Act? I’m quite relaxed. Quite relaxed!” beamed Farage. “And if the media say isn’t that a party split,” he continued, “I say no, we’re grown-ups! We have different judgements on some things.”

Farage, who previously claimed he would not expel UKIP members who call gay people “disgusting,” went on to tell me he feels same-sex marriages are “profoundly illiberal” because religious groups may be forced to perform same-sex weddings. He criticised the legalisation of gay marriage, which received royal assent in July, saying that there is “a very real legal risk that you could finish up with faith communities being forced to conduct such ceremonies,” which would be wrong because “it would stop people pursuing some of their own beliefs.”

I then asked the animated politician what he would change if he could go back a few years. “There’s no point regretting things. You’re too young to have regrets – wait till you’re my age and you’ll have loads of them,” the 49 year-old tittered. “Privately, we all have regrets in our lives, but a regret is a passing thought. It’s not something that you should allow to become an opening sore. You make decisions, you have to live with the consequences.”

“So that’s the past,” I said. “What about the future? What are your realistic ambitions for 2015?”

“Well I think that’s the wrong question,” he declared. “You’re asking the same question that all the media pack are asking. You’re all forgetting something quite fundamental: that in less than thirty weeks’ time we have the European elections. If you come and ask me that question this time next year, I’ll give you an answer, but I think how we do in 2015 depends heavily on how we do in 2014.”

“And you’ve said that you can win those elections?” He clearly wanted to avoid debating the next general election, so I continued on the European front. “Well I believe we have the potential to win those elections, yes, I really do.” Farage then labelled Cameron’s referendum promise “pathetic” and said Labour and the Liberal Democrats were “all at sea” on that issue.

Perhaps most striking that afternoon was learning about the relationship between leader and party: Farage admitted that he and UKIP disagree fundamentally on a number of issues. “UKIP says we haven’t enforced the law on drugs properly and we have to get tougher,” said the party leader. “My own view is different. I think the war on drugs was lost many years ago. Drugs are now openly available, not just in the streets of London but in hamlets on the North Cornish coast. They call it petty crime but it’s not so petty if it’s your grandmother who’s been bashed over the head and had her handbag taken.”

Grandmothers seem to be quite a prominent topic of conversation in all my political interviews. In July, for instance, Mail on Sunday journalist Peter Hitchens told me most people “would rather tandoori their grandmothers and eat them than vote Conservative.” Something Farage would no doubt love to be true.

“Did your aeroplane incident in 2010 put politics into perspective for you?” We had five minutes left and I wanted to find out about the man himself, not just what he stood for.

“Well I’ve had several disasters in life.” – a car crash and his battle with testicular cancer are two other major hardships – “I’ve been through a few scrapes, you could say! I think the plane crash was the most frightening of the three really bad experiences. It does give you a sense of perspective; I mean I do work incredibly hard, and I do take it very seriously.

“But you’ve got to take a little bit of time smelling the flowers along the way. And if that means having the odd pint and the odd good lunch, and a bit of a laugh while you do it, I try and do that. Having got out of the wreckage of that wretched thing; I was hurt,but long-term relatively unscathed, I think it probably helps me in a way.”

It was this I came to admire about the man who has been on the end of interminable criticism, lavish media mistreatment and unwarranted life calamities: that his genuine passion for his country and its people has kept him going. “I feel our influence on the European debate, the immigration, law, education, and now Syrian debates. We’ve been a remarkable catalyst for change in the whole nature of British politics,” he held, more than satisfied with his achievements to date. “And I’m very proud to have been at the front, charging, but now what I really want to do is make sure UKIP is a party that changes the future of this country. And I mean that.”

It was an attractive answer. But with UKIP home to a “bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists;” with the vast majority of members in favour of the death penalty; with the party officially sceptical of global warming; and with intentions to increase defence spending by some 40 per cent, there will certainly be room for concern if UKIP actually do manage to change the future of this country. And I mean that.