Nigel Farage
Nigel Paul Farage is a British politician who has been Member of Parliament for Clacton and Leader of Reform UK since 2024, having previously been its leader from 2019 to 2021. He was the leader of the UK Independence Party from 2006 to 2009 and 2010 to 2016. Farage served as a Member of the European Parliament for South East England from 1999 until the UK's withdrawal from the European Union in 2020.
A prominent Eurosceptic since the early 1990s, Farage was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999. In 2004 he became the president of Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy. Farage was elected UKIP's leader in 2006 and led the party at the 2009 European Parliament election, when it won the second-most votes in the UK. He stood unsuccessfully in Buckingham at the 2010 general election before he returned as UKIP's leader that same year. At the 2014 European Parliament election UKIP won the most seats in the UK, pressuring David Cameron to call the 2016 EU membership referendum. At the 2015 general election Farage was an unsuccessful candidate in South Thanet.
After the referendum, Farage resigned as UKIP's leader. In 2018 he co-founded the Brexit Party, which drew support from those frustrated by the delayed implementation of Brexit by Theresa May's government, and won the most votes at the 2019 European Parliament election, becoming the largest single party in the parliament; May announced her resignation days later, and was succeeded by Boris Johnson, whose government delivered Brexit in 2020; Farage has criticised the delivery of Brexit on several occasions. At the 2024 general election Farage again became Reform UK's leader, and won in Clacton. Since then, he has maintained a high media profile as Reform UK's support has risen, with the party leading UK-wide voting-intention in polls throughout the majority of 2025.
Early life and education
Nigel Paul Farage was born on 3 April 1964 in Farnborough, Kent, England, the son of Barbara and Guy Justus Oscar Farage. His father was a stockbroker who worked in the City of London. A 2012 BBC Radio 4 profile described Guy Farage as an alcoholic who left the family home when Nigel was five years old. His father gave up alcohol two years later, in 1971, and entered the antiques trade, having lost his Stock Exchange position; the next year, endorsed by friends, he returned to the trading floor at the new Stock Exchange Tower on Threadneedle Street.Farage's paternal grandfather, Harry Farage, served as a private in the First World War and was wounded during the Battle of Arras. It has been suggested that the Farage name comes from a distant Huguenot ancestor. Both parents of one of Farage's great-grandfathers were Germans who immigrated to London from the Frankfurt area shortly after 1861.
Farage's first school was Greenhayes School for Boys in West Wickham and he subsequently spent a short period at a similar school in nearby Eden Park. From 1975 to 1982, Farage was educated at Dulwich College, a fee-paying private school in south London. Politicians visited the school, including Keith Joseph, Edward Heath and Enoch Powell. Farage joined the Conservative Party in 1978 after the visit of Keith Joseph.
In December 2025, twenty-six former pupils and teaching staff at Dulwich College signed an open letter published in The Guardian asking Farage to apologise for alleged racist and antisemitic behaviour during his time there. Other former pupils who knew Farage said that they do not recall the behaviour described. Reform UK responded to the open letter by describing it as "a naked attempt to discredit Reform and Nigel Farage", adding that "the left-wing media and deeply unpopular Labour Party are now using 50-year-old smears in a last act of desperation." Farage denied making any of the comments that were attributed to him.
One Jewish classmate of Farage, Peter Ettedgui alleged in 2025 that Farage repeatedly made antisemitic remarks targeting him, including "Hitler was right" and "gas 'em". The Guardian reported that eight other pupils have corroborated Ettedgui's account. Farage responded to the allegation by stating: "I categorically deny saying those things" which Ettedgui said was "fundamentally dishonest". One Black former Dulwich College pupil told The Guardian that Farage allegedly made repeated racist remarks targeting him, including "That's the way back to Africa", "simply because of how I looked". Farage denied saying anything racist or antisemitic directly at an individual and suggested that the claims were politically motivated.
In 1981, Dulwich staff debated whether his views ought to exclude him from becoming a prefect; ultimately he was appointed. At the time, English teacher, Chloe Deakin, wrote to the master of the college, David Emms, asking him to reconsider his decision to appoint Farage as a prefect, citing his alleged "publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views". Deakin did not know Farage personally but included, in her letter, an account of what was said by staff at their annual meeting, held a few days earlier, to discuss new prefects. Emms later said of Farage's behaviour: "It was naughtiness, not racism" and said he was "proved right" to have made Farage a prefect. In his 2010 autobiography, Farage wrote that the outrage was because staff "deplored my spirited defence of Enoch Powell". A deputy headmaster later summarised Farage's argumentation as intentionally antagonistic but facetious. Responding in 2013, Farage stated: "Of course I said some ridiculous things. Not necessarily racist things. It depends how you define it." He acknowledged that his statements as a pupil "would offend deeply".
Early career
After leaving school in 1982, Farage obtained employment in the City of London, as a commodities trader. Initially, he joined the American commodity operation of brokerage firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, transferring to Crédit Lyonnais Rouse in 1986. He joined Refco in 1994, and Natixis Metals in 2003.Farage had joined the Conservative Party in 1978, but voted for the Green Party in the 1989 European election due to their Eurosceptic policies. He left the Conservatives in 1992 in protest at Prime Minister John Major's government's signing of the Treaty on European Union at Maastricht. In 1992, Farage joined the Anti-Federalist League. In 1993, he was a founding member of UKIP. In 1994, Farage asked Enoch Powell to endorse UKIP and to stand for them, both of which Powell declined.
European Parliament
Farage was elected to the European Parliament in 1999 and re-elected in 2004, 2009 and 2014. The BBC spent four months filming a documentary about his European election campaign in 1999 but did not air it. Farage, then head of the UKIP's South East office, asked for a video and had friends make copies which were sold for £5 through the UKIP's magazine. Surrey Trading Standards investigated, and no offence was found. Farage was the leader of the 24-member UKIP contingent in the European Parliament, and co-leader of the multinational Eurosceptic group, Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy. Farage was ranked the fifth-most influential MEP by Politico in 2016, who described him as "one of the two most effective speakers in the chamber". He would be assigned office number 007 in the European Parliament.On 18 November 2004 Farage announced in the European Parliament that Jacques Barrot, then French Commissioner-designate, had been barred from elected office in France for two years, after being convicted in 2000 of embezzling £2 million from government funds and diverting it into the coffers of his party. He said that French President Jacques Chirac had granted Barrot amnesty; initial BBC reports said that, under French law, it was perhaps illegal to mention that conviction. The prohibition in question applies only to French officials in the course of their duties. The President of the Parliament, Josep Borrell, asked him to retract his comments and warned of potential "legal consequences". The following day, it was confirmed that Barrot had received an eight-month suspended jail sentence in the case, and that this had been quickly expunged by the amnesty decided by Chirac and his parliamentary majority.
In early 2005 Farage requested that the European Commission disclose where the individual Commissioners had spent their holidays. The Commission did not provide the information requested, on the basis that the Commissioners had a right of privacy. The German newspaper Die Welt reported that the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, had spent a week on the yacht of the Greek shipping billionaire Spiros Latsis. It emerged soon afterwards that this had occurred a month before the Commission under Barroso's predecessor Romano Prodi approved 10.3 million euros of Greek state aid for Latsis's shipping company. It also became known that Peter Mandelson, then the British EU Commissioner, had accepted a trip to Jamaica from an unrevealed source at a debate on 26 May 2005. The motion was heavily defeated. A Conservative MEP, Roger Helmer, was expelled from his group, the European People's Party – European Democrats, in the middle of the debate by that group's leader Hans-Gert Pöttering as a result of his support for Farage's motion. Farage persuaded around 75 MEPs from across the political divide to back a motion of no confidence in Barroso, which would be sufficient to compel Barroso to appear before the European Parliament to be questioned on the issue. The motion was successfully tabled on 12 May 2005, and Barroso appeared before Parliament.
Charles, Prince of Wales was invited to speak to the European Parliament in February 2008; in his speech he called for EU leadership in the battle against climate change. During the standing ovation that followed, Farage was the only MEP to remain seated, and he went on to describe the Prince's advisers as "naive and foolish at best".
In May 2009 The Observer reported a Foreign Press Association speech given by Farage in which he had said that over his ten years as a Member of the European Parliament he had received a total of £2 million of taxpayers' money in staff, travel, and other expenses. In response, Farage said that in future all UKIP MEPs would provide monthly expense details.
After the speech of Herman Van Rompuy on 24 February 2010 to the European Parliament, Farage – to protests from other MEPs – addressed the former Prime Minister of Belgium and first long-term President of the European Council, saying that he had the "charisma of a damp rag" and the appearance of "a low grade bank clerk". Farage questioned the legitimacy of Van Rompuy's appointment, asking, "Who are you? I'd never heard of you, nobody in Europe had ever heard of you." He also said that Van Rompuy's "intention to be the quiet assassin of European democracy and of the European nation states". Van Rompuy commented afterwards, "There was one contribution that I can only hold in contempt, but I'm not going to comment further." After declining to apologise for behaviour that was, in the words of the President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, "inappropriate, unparliamentary and insulting to the dignity of the House", Farage was reprimanded and had his right to ten days' allowance "docked".
Buzek said after his meeting with Farage:
I defend absolutely Mr Farage's right to disagree about the policy or institutions of the Union, but not to personally insult our guests in the European Parliament or the country from which they may come... I myself fought for free speech as the absolute cornerstone of a democratic society. But with freedom comes responsibility – in this case, to respect the dignity of others and of our institutions. I am disappointed by Mr Farage's behaviour, which sits ill with the great parliamentary tradition of his own country. I cannot accept this sort of behaviour in the European Parliament. I invited him to apologise, but he declined to do so. I have therefore – as an expression of the seriousness of the matter – rescinded his right to ten days' daily allowance as a Member.
Questioned by Camilla Long of The Times, Farage described his speech: "it wasn't abusive, it was right."
In a second visit to Edinburgh in May 2014 Farage correctly predicted that UKIP would win a Scottish seat in the European Parliament elections. Two hundred protesters heckled and booed him. Thirty police in two vans were needed to preserve order.
In the European Parliament elections in 2014, Farage led UKIP to win the highest share of the vote. It was the first time a political party other than the Labour Party and Conservative Party had won the popular vote in a national election since the 1906 general election. It was also the first time a party other than the Labour and Conservatives won the largest number of seats in a national election since the December 1910 general election.
In June 2014 Farage declared £205,603 for gifts over ten years, including free use of a barn for his constituency office, which had been declared in the EU register in Brussels each year. The Electoral Commission said that the gifts should have been also declared in the UK within 30 days of receipt and fined Farage £200.
In early November 2014, just days after becoming head of the European Commission, the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker was hit by media disclosures—derived from a document leak known as Luxembourg Leaks—that Luxembourg under his premiership had turned into a major European centre of corporate tax avoidance. A subsequent motion of censure in the European Parliament was brought against Juncker over his role in the tax avoidance schemes. The motion was defeated by a large majority. Farage was one of the main drivers behind the censure motion.