Nigel Farage – Member of European Parliament (MEP)

Founding Member and Former Leader of United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)

Nigel Farage MEP

Former Leader of UKIP

In office 27 September 2006 – 27 November 2009

Preceded by: Roger Knapman

Succeeded by: The Lord Pearson Rannoch

Member of the Euopean Parliament for the South EastIncumbent

Assumed office: 15 July 1999

Born: 3 April 1964 (age 45)

Kent, United Kingdom

Political party: UK Independence

Website: NigelFarageMEP.co.uk

Nigel Paul Farage (born 3 April 1964) is a British politician, and former leader of the right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). He is also a member of the European Parliament for the South East. He co-chairs the European Parliament's Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

On 4 September 2009, it was announced Farage would resign as leader of UKIP.[1] This was to enable him to concentrate on his efforts to become an MP at Westminster. If successful he will be obliged to give up being an MEP due to the dual mandate rule.

Early life and career

Farage was educated at Dulwich College before joining a commodity brokerage firm in London. He ran his own brokerage business from the early 1990s until 2002.

Active in the Conservative Party from his school days until the resignation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1990, he left the party in 1992 when John Major's government signed the Treaty on European Union at Maastricht. He became a founding member of UKIP in 1993 and has contested UK parliamentary elections for UKIP five times. He was elected to the European Parliament in 1999 and re-elected in 2004 and 2009. Farage is currently leader of the thirteen-member UKIP contingent in the European Parliament, and co-leader of the multinational eurosceptic group, Europe of Freedom and Democracy. He also contested the Bromley & Chislehurst constituency during the May 2006 by-election, organised after the Member of Parliament representing it, the eurosceptic Conservative Eric Forth, died. He scored third, winning 8% of the vote, thus beating the Labour Party candidate. This was the second-best by-election result recorded by UKIP out of 25 results.

Farage married first, in 1988, Grainne Hayes, with whom he had two children, Samuel (born 1989) and Thomas (born 1991). In 1999 he married the German Kirsten Mehr, with whom he has a further two children, Victoria (born 2000) and Isabelle (born 2005).[2]

Leader of UKIP

On 12 September 2006, Nigel Farage was elected leader of UKIP with 45% of the vote, 20% ahead of his nearest rival.[3] He pledged to bring discipline to the party and to maximise UKIP's representation in local, parliamentary and other elections.[citation needed] In a PM programme interview on BBC Radio 4 that day he pledged to end the public perception of UKIP as a single-issue party and to work with allied politicians in the Better Off Out campaign, committing himself not to stand against the MPs who have signed up to that campaign (ten in all at this moment).

At his maiden speech to the UKIP conference on 8 October 2006, he told delegates that the party was "at the centre-ground of British public opinion" and the "real voice of opposition". Farage said: "We've got three social democratic parties in Britain — Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative are virtually indistinguishable from each other on nearly all the main issues" and "you can't put a cigarette paper between them and that is why there are nine million people who don't vote now in general elections that did back in 1992."[4]

At 10pm on 19 October 2006, Farage took part in a three-hour live interview and phone-in with James Whale on national radio station talkSPORT. Four days later, Whale announced on his show his intention to stand as UKIP's candidate in the 2008 London Mayoral Election. Farage said that Whale "not only has guts, but an understanding of what real people think". However Whale later decided not to stand and UKIP was represented by Gerard Batten.[livepage.apple.com5]

In September 2009 he announced that he would stand against John Bercow, the newly elected Speaker of the House of Commons, in his Buckingham constituency in the Next United Kingdom general election, despite a convention that the speaker is outside of party politics, and not challenged for re-election.[6]