Background and career
Nigel Paul Farage (born 3 April 1964) is a British politician who has been Leader of Reform UK and Member of Parliament for Clacton since 2024. He was the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009 and from 2010 to 2016, and a member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England from 1999 until the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union (EU) in 2020. Farage was a member of the Conservative Party for 14 years, from 1978 to 1992. He has been a prominent Eurosceptic since the early 1990s and 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 returning as UKIP's leader later that 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 (renamed Reform UK in 2021), which drew support from those frustrated by the delayed implementation of Brexit by the Conservative government, and won the most votes at the 2019 European Parliament election, becoming the largest single party in the parliament. At the 2024 general election Farage again became Reform UK's leader, and won in Clacton. In July 2026, whilst under investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over undeclared gifts including one of £5 million, Farage announced his resignation as MP for Clacton, triggering a by-election which he won with 63.3% of the vote.
Nigel Paul Farage was born on 3 April 1964 in Farnborough, Kent, England, the son of Barbara née Stevens 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 as an alcoholic who left the family home when Nigel was five years old. Guy 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 said in 2026 that his mother remarried a local man a few years later and that he is on good terms with both parents. 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 French 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 Joseph's visit. In December 2025 twenty-five former pupils and one ex-teacher 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". Jason Meredith, who was three years below Farage at Dulwich College, alleged to The Guardian that he had been subjected to racist insults, including being called a "paki" and being told to "go back home". Cyrus Oshidar, who was in the same year as Farage, also alleged to The Guardian that Farage called him a "paki". When questioned by ITV News about the allegations of racist behaviour, Farage said: "I don't apologise for things that are complete made-up fantasies. Some of what I heard was just absolute nonsense by people with very obvious, if you looked, political motivation". 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. The author and journalist Michael Crick found equal proportions of Farage's past acquaintances who did, and who did not recall Farage engaging in racist behaviour. According to Crick, as a youth, Farage could be friendly to people of minority ethnicities, and Crick concluded that as an adult, Farage was not a racist. Reverend Neil Fairlamb, a former teacher at Dulwich College, said he did not see racism from Farage—instead referring to him as "objectionable" in a complimentary way. 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 Chloë Deakin wrote to David Emms, the head teacher, 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. In 2025, Deakin told The Guardian that in 1981 there was discussion amongst pupils referring to Farage as a bully. She also recalled that some colleagues at the time told of his fascination with the far-right, including allegedly "goose‑stepping" during cadet force marches. Deakin added that she believed school leaders had overlooked repeated accounts of troubling behaviour raised by pupils and teachers at the time. David Emms said of Farage's behaviour: "It was naughtiness, not racism" and said that though he "didn't probe too closely into that naughtiness" he was "proved right" to have made Farage a prefect because of his potential. 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".
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. Former UKIP leader Alan Sked has alleged that, shortly before the 1997 general election, Farage urged him to drop the party's ban on former National Front members standing as UKIP candidates. According to Sked, when he objected, Farage allegedly replied that they should not "worry about the nigger vote. Nig-nogs will never vote for us". Farage dismissed this allegation as "complete rubbish". When questioned in 2014 about Sked's claim, Farage stated that only Sked had made that allegation and "in politics all sorts of disappointments happen to people and they throw mud". On 12 September 2006 Farage was elected leader of UKIP with 45 per cent of the vote, 20 percentage points ahead of his nearest rival. He pledged to bring discipline to the party and to maximise UKIP's representation in local, parliamentary and other elections. 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. In his maiden speech to the UKIP conference, on 8 October 2006, Farage told delegates that the party was "at the centre-ground of British public opinion" and the "real voice of opposition". He 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".
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 (EPP-ED), 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 [is] 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 (expenses) "docked". 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 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. During his time in the European Parliament, Farage had one of the lowest attendance and voting records in the history of the institution. During his 21-year tenure as an MEP (1999–2020), parliamentary watchdogs routinely ranked him near the bottom of active lawmakers. As a member of the European Parliament Committee on Fisheries, Farage attended one of 42 recorded meetings over a three-year period. VoteWatch Europe ranked his voting participation at around 37% in his fourth term, placing him, as of January 2018, 748th out of 751 MEPs overall. Byline Times reported that analysis of parliamentary output from 2016 to 2019 showed he submitted one written question and no motions, reports or amendments.
On 4 September 2009 Farage resigned as UKIP's leader to focus on his campaign to become Member of Parliament for Buckingham at Westminster in the 2010 general election. He later told The Times journalist Camilla Long that UKIP internal fights took up far too much time. Farage stood against sitting Buckingham MP, John Bercow, the newly elected Speaker of the House of Commons, despite the convention that the Speaker, as a political neutral, is not normally challenged in his or her bid for re-election by any of the major parties. He later said he "miscalculated" the popularity of Bercow in the constituency. Farage came third with 8,401 votes. Bercow was re-elected with 12,529 votes and in second place with 10,331 votes was John Stevens, a former Conservative MEP who campaigned as an independent accompanied by "Flipper the Dolphin" (a reference to MPs – including Bercow – flipping second homes).
