Tag Archives: nigel farage

Flying Free: Nigel Farage’s take on his own life

By Mark Pack | Published 5th January 2012 - 10:25 am

Events and the political calendar are likely to keep UKIP as one of the most prominent ‘other’ political parties in the UK over the next few years, making this newly revised and expanded autobiography of its most high-profile and flamboyant personality, Nigel Farage, timely not only for the party’s own fans but for anyone else interested in British politics.

It is a well written, lively book, full of the sort of pugnacious language that has helped give Farage his high popularity. It is also rather kinder to some of his opponents that you might expect if you had only come across Farage through his headline grabbing strings of insults aimed at others, though when it comes to the EU and its main functionaries he doesn’t hold back. He even has some kinds words to say for the man who threatened to kill him – and rightly so given the person’s mental health had fallen apart.

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Posted in Books | Also tagged | 9 Comments

Nigel Farage to stand for UKIP leadership (again)

By Iain Roberts | Published 3rd September 2010 - 1:49 pm

According to the BBC, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage is to throw his hat into the ring and attempt to get his old job back.

The position became vacant last month when Lord Pearson stood down, admitting with surprising honesty that he wasn’t up to the job. Farage’s decision may have been prompted by suspicions that none of the other likely candidates are up to the job either.

Farage, an MEP, failed in his attempt to unseat the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, at the General Election, finishing a disappointing third. An election day aircrash had left him injured and …

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 10 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 4 April 2010 with special beard and moustache feature

By Mark Pack | Published 4th April 2010 - 9:00 am

It’s Sunday. It’s 9am. It’s time for beards. And moustaches. But first the news.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories

Teachers threaten strikes over workload

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Posted in Daily View | Also tagged , | Leave a comment

Teachers, Thatcher, tax and troops: Nick Clegg Q&A

By Helen Duffett | Published 13th March 2010 - 7:26 pm

Nick Clegg answers questions at Spring Conference, Birmingham

In this afternoon’s Q&A from the Conference hall, Nick Clegg tackled questions from the floor with a relaxed and confident manner that bodes well for the upcoming TV Leaders’ Debates.

He took questions from party members in the hall, before taking supplementaries.

First up was education and whether schools should use the Pupil Premium to reduce class sizes. Nick said that the Pupil Premium seeks to give back trust to teachers and headteachers. Smaller class sizes are important for instilling a sense of self-confidence and …

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Posted in Conference | Also tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

BNP announce Parliamentary Candidate for Buckingham

By Helen Duffett | Published 9th March 2010 - 12:58 pm

The BNP has announced its Buckingham candidate for the 2010 General Election, adding another candidate to a slate which already includes UKIP, John Stevens (former Lib Dem member and before that, Conservative MEP,) Patrick Phillips (“conservatively minded” Independent candidate) and Geoff Howard (former Conservative and UKIP member).

With the three main parties refraining from standing against the Speaker, it will be interesting to see how the vote is split by the minor parties and independents, all of whom have or have had right-wing leanings.

The Liberal Democrats have chosen a spokesperson rather than a candidate.

From the Buckingham Advertiser:

The British National

…

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Posted in General Election, News | Also tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

UKIP expel MEP in dispute over ‘extremist’ links

By Mark Pack | Published 7th March 2010 - 10:20 am

This week The Times reported of Nikki Sinclaire:

The UK Independence Party has expelled one of its MEPs after she refused to sit with its right-wing Italian allies in the European Parliament and fell out with former leader Nigel Farage…

Ms Sinclaire, 41, an MEP for the West Midlands, insisted that she wanted to stay with the party but would not join UKIP’s alliance in Strasbourg with the “extremist” Northern League of Italy. She has also said that she lost faith in Mr Farage because of his “personal animosity” towards her…

UKIP has a track record for losing MEPs, having entered the

…

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Posted in Opposition watch | Also tagged , | 2 Comments

How much of a battle does Bercow face in Buckingham?

By Helen Duffett | Published 26th February 2010 - 9:10 am

Further developments in Buckingham, John Bercow MP’s constituency, where convention dictates that other parties don’t put up a candidate against the incumbent Speaker:

UKIP is looking forward to a large donation, whilst claiming that fundraising on Bercow’s behalf breaches Parliamentary rules. Meanwhile, Buckingham Liberal Democrats announce their plan for the General Election.

The Times reports that a UKIP member from Buckingham has complained to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards after receiving a letter from fundraising team “The Friends of Speaker Bercow”:

[John Russell] has written to the commissioner expressing concern that The Friends of Speaker Bercow may be breaching parliamentary rules

…

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Posted in General Election, News | Also tagged , , , | 23 Comments

Why shouldn’t Buckingham Liberal Democrats join in?

By Philip Young | Published 22nd December 2009 - 10:45 am

The accepted wisdom is that it is “protocol” not to oppose the Speaker. Yet there are plenty of examples that this is simply not true – Selwyn Lloyd, for one, was opposed, and there are other examples (and we are not talking pre-war or the mists of time).

What is going on in Buckingham is extraordinary. The Speaker is unpopular with his local party – not just a large block of Conservative MPs in Parliament – and his wife has shot through the Labour Party hoops and jumped other hurdles to go on the list of approved …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , | 26 Comments

Lord Pearson as a Tory party whip and Griffin v. Maloney

By Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP | Published 9th December 2009 - 4:13 pm

UKIP have got themselves into a right pickle recently, poor things! It emerged last week that their new leader Lord Pearson a number of months ago made a somewhat controversial offer to the Conservative party. Pearson allegedly (The Times, 30 November, UKIP’s planned deal with Tories causes outrage in anti-Europe party) approached Lord Strathclyde, the leader of the Tories in the House of Lords, with an offer to disband the party and withdraw all UKIP candidates if the Tories agreed to hold a referendum on EU membership. Lord Strathclyde himself has confirmed that the meeting with Pearson, who is in fact a former Tory, took place.

Although Nigel Farage has since changed the story slightly saying that the offer only included withdrawing all candidates, this is still a pretty hefty political gamble.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Former UKIP MEP goes down for two years

By Iain Roberts | Published 11th November 2009 - 4:12 pm

Nigel Farage must be hoping the latest crop of UKIP MEPs prove more honest than the 2004 intake, after former MEP Tom Wise was sentenced to two years in prison.

Wise, who until earlier this year was an MEP for the East of England, channelled £39,000 of taxpayers’ money into a secret bank account and spent it on cars and wine.

His trick was to pay his assistant £500 a month, say he was paying her £3,000 a month and pocket the difference.

The scam was reported by the Daily Telegraph in October 2005. A couple of years later, Tom …

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Posted in Europe / International, News | Also tagged , , | 6 Comments

Would slavery have been abolished under Farage?

By Iain Roberts | Published 3rd October 2009 - 6:33 pm

It would be nice to think that the 18th century British parliament saw the light and abolished slavery when the matter was first put to them. But we all know that isn’t what happened. William Wilberforce and his colleagues lost the vote on their first attempt. And their second. And their third.

So Nigel Farage’s suggestion, made on RTE, that the Irish referendum score on the Lisbon Treaty is now 1-1 and we should have a decider is very strange. Would we ever have abolished slavery if Farage had been in charge of the voting? …

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Posted in Europe / International, Op-eds | Also tagged , | 32 Comments

Standing against the Speaker: never mind the politics, what about the voters?

By Stephen Tall | Published 5th September 2009 - 2:15 pm

There’s been plenty of interesting Lib Dem internet chatter asking whether – now Ukip’s soon-to-be-ex-leader Nigel Farage is breaching normal convention and standing against the incumbent Speaker, Tory MP John Bercow, in Buckingham – the Lib Dems should follow suit.

Opinion is divided. Some say we absolutely shouldn’t – here, for instance, is Stephen Glenn:

… while the ‘convention’ for not standing against a sitting speaker is not as set in stone as some people may have you believe, it is none the less a precedent symbolising the apolitical nature of the role. Indeed it seems to be one, that even if contested, the constituents seem to back up as not one speaker seeking election since 1969 has polled less than 50% of the vote.

And here’s the Wit and Wisdom blog:

Liberal Democrats wanting to be taken seriously should give the Speaker a clear run at the next election as is the convention.

Meanwhile Mark Littlewood at Liberal Vision is more open to the idea that the Lib Dems should stand a candidate to oppose Speaker Bercow and Mr Farage:

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments

Question Time – open thread, 28/05 #bbcqt

By Alex Foster | Published 28th May 2009 - 9:20 pm

Question Time returns to its previous time slot of 2240 this evening, and the BBC website tells us the panel will be:

Europe Minister Caroline Flint, Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson Jo Swinson, Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, UKIP leader Nigel Farage, and French businessman Pierre-Yves Gerbeau.

In the last week before the European elections, the programme is billed as a Euro special from London.  If the politicos can avoid being booed off stage merely for being politicos, there are loads of interesting ways the debate can go.  Caroline vs Caroline; Greens vs Lib Dems on who has …

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Also tagged , , , , | 13 Comments

Lib Dems tackle UKIP head on

By Alex Foster | Published 27th May 2009 - 10:43 am

On Monday, the Lib Dem’s chair of Communications Edward Davey wrote to the leader of UKIP Nigel Farage MEP to challenge him on failing to publish his own expenses, on the disgraceful voting record of his European Parliamentary Party, and on the shameful track record of his fellow parliamentarians.

“UKIP MEPs have attacked others over their expenses while living the high life in Brussels, charging the taxpayer, and hiding the true cost from voters.

“One in six UKIP MEPs elected in 2004 has since faced criminal charges over their creative accounting. Meanwhile, UKIP turned up in the European Parliament to vote

…

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Posted in Opposition watch | Also tagged , , | 3 Comments

UKIP leader in desperate fishing expedition: ‘No difference between the parties, so you may as well join us’

By The Voice | Published 28th November 2006 - 1:32 pm

Farage“Dear Councillor,

“There does not seem to be very much difference between our three main parties these days.  This is hardly surprising as 75% of our laws are now made by the EU with little or no input from Westminster.

“As you must realise local government is in a poor state too with a new unelected layer of Regional Assemblies and voter disenchantment.

“In UKIP we believe that it is essential for the UK to become self-governing again and for voters to want to participate.  We are developing as a broadly based real party of …

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Posted in Opposition watch | Also tagged | 5 Comments