Nigel Farage

"I think that politics needs a bit of spicing up."

"We seek an amicable divorce from the European Union and its replacement with a genuine free-trade agreement, which is what my parents' generation thought we’d signed up for in the first place."

"You have the charisma of a damp rag, and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk. And the question that I want to ask, […] that we're all going to ask, is "Who are you?" I'd never heard of you. Nobody in Europe had ever heard of you. I would like to ask you, President, who voted for you, and what mechanism … oh, I know democracy's not popular with you lot, and what mechanism do the people of Europe have to remove you? Is this European democracy? Well, I sense, I sense though that you are competent and capable and dangerous, and I have no doubt in your intention, to be the quiet assassin of European democracy, and of the European nation states. You appear to have a loathing for the very concept of the existence of nation states - perhaps that's because you come from Belgium, which of course is pretty much a non-country. But since you took over, we've seen Greece reduced to nothing more than a protectorate. Sir, you have no legitimacy in this job at all, and I can say with confidence that I speak on behalf of the majority of British people in saying: We don't know you, we don't want you, and the sooner you're put out to grass, the better."

"I have been called a great many things in my time – that's politics."

"And I honestly predict that I mean this. That if we go on doing this to Greece. We will drive that country into a violent revolution."

"And what is the reaction of the British political class? Well the Lib Dems, still think that the Euro is a success! I don't quite think where Cleggy gets this from, I don't know. Perhaps he is considering an alternative career as a stand up comedian, once he's out of politics."

"When people stand up and talk about the great success that the EU has been, I'm not sure anybody saying it really believes it themselves anymore."

"It is virtually impossible for what you are voting on to remain as it is currently. There could be huge changes to the [EU fiscal] treaty and there could be huge changes to the euro zone itself."

"The EU is mired in deep structural crisis. Greece, Portugal and Ireland cannot survive inside the Euro."

"If Spain goes, Europe on its own will not be big enough to save the banks."

"The situation in Greece just goes from bad to worse. We’ve now got a situation where there was the big suicide a few weeks ago, where a 77-year-old man shot himself in the head outside the Greek Parliament. That was the public face of what’s gone wrong."

"But do you know that every day there are people that are literally leaving their children at the doors of the Greek Orthodox Church, with notes around their necks saying, ‘We cannot afford to feed or look after these children, please take them from us.’ Can you imagine that?"

"This is taking place inside Europe. This is taking place inside a once great nation. The nation that invented democracy. We are on the edge of total social breakdown. And frankly, as far as the euro is concerned and the austerity measures are concerned, the medicine is killing the patient."

"I do think that the banking system is now in the most perilous state we’ve seen in over 70 years."

"The euro Titanic has now hit the iceberg - and there simply aren't enough lifeboats to go round."

"[EU leaders] are not undemocratic. They are anti-democratic. These are very bad and dangerous people. They are the worst people we have seen in Europe since 1945."

"If we are just going to have a fudged referendum on 'do we stay in or go further?' then that's not good enough."

"Once again, I challenge the Prime Minister to have an open debate with me on why he believes we must stay part of this failing, corrupt EU. The future of our nation is at stake. Mr Cameron, you have my phone number."

"As you are well aware, the last time the people of this country were given a say on membership of the European Union was back in 1975. This must have been a factor in your thinking when, in 2007, you gave a “cast-iron guarantee” to hold a referendum if you became Prime Minister. Since that promise, however, your message on the issue has been confusing and misleading. You say the time is not right but refuse to clarify when the time will be right. You believe that leaving would not be in our best interests and an in/out referendum is flawed because it offers a “single choice”. In last week’s Sun poll, almost 70 per cent of voters said they would like a referendum. In the same poll, a clear majority said they would like to leave the EU and yet your plans would deny them that opportunity. I believe the British people, along with many of your own backbench MPs, want and deserve a straight in/out choice in a referendum. I propose a public debate between us where we can put our respective cases forward. My challenge to you is an open and honest one and I hope you will afford me, and the people of this country, a proper say on the matter."

"We know the costs of Europe. What are the benefits?"

"[On his aircraft accident during the 2010 general election campaign] I survived a bloody crash [...] I have more vigor and vim and gusto then I ever had before. I’m also an inch shorter."

"I'm not really a politician [..] I’m actually a businessman. I supported Margaret Thatcher, I believed in Ronald Reagan, I believe in free markets, I believe in small government, enterprise, hard work, and I believe in a taxation system that doesn’t punish those who do well in life."

"Rather than bring peace and harmony, the EU will cause insurgency and violence."

"I'm not for sale, neither is UKIP."

"The opening of the doors on January 1, 2014, to 29 million Romanians and Bulgarians is going to become a huge issue next year."

"I have to say that everybody from David Cameron to half this panel say, "Wouldn't it be terrible if we were like Norway and Switzerland?" Really? They're rich. They're happy. They're self governing."

"[Any changes Mr Cameron could obtain from Brussels would be cosmetic and the UK risks becoming] a province of a United States of Europe"

"Winning this referendum, if and when it comes, is not going to be an easy thing but I feel that UKIP's real job starts today,"

"We wouldn't want to be like the Swiss, would we? That would be awful! We'd be rich!"

"I was asked last week if UKIP would have been necessary if Mrs Thatcher had not been overthrown before the Maastricht treaty. Had she still been in power in 1992 there would have been a referendum on that treaty, and the need for UKIP would probably never have arisen."

"If this is the face of Scottish nationalism, it's a pretty ugly nation."

"Absolutely none. But rather more than the BBC do. We could have had this interview in England a couple of years ago, although I wouldn’t have met with such hatred that I’m getting from your questions, and frankly I’ve had enough of this interview. Goodbye."

"I want friendship, co-operation and trade (with the EU). I don't want to be part of a political union."

"[Asked for the leader he held in the greatest respect] As an operator, but not as a human being, I would say [[Vladimir Putin|[Vladimir] Putin]]."

"The way he played the whole Syria thing. Brilliant. Not that I approve of him politically. How many journalists in jail now?"

"[Responding to criticism of his comments in the GQ interview] I said it just after parliament had voted not to go to war in Syria, thank God. One of the things Putin said did actually change the debate in this country … I did make it perfectly clear. It depends what it means by the word … I said I don't like him, I wouldn't trust him and I wouldn't want to live in his country, but compared with the kids who run foreign policy in this country, I've more respect for him than our lot."

"When I said yes to these debates I thought you would honestly make the pro-EU case. By saying 7% of our laws are made in Brussels, you are wilfully lying to the British people about the extent to which we have given control of our country and our democracy and I am really shocked and surprised you would do that."

"[immigration is] good for the rich because it's cheaper nannies and cheaper chauffeurs and cheaper gardeners but it's bad news for ordinary Britons... it has left the white working class effectively as an underclass, and I think that is a disaster for our society"

"I want the EU to end but I want it to end democratically. If it doesn't end democratically I'm afraid it will end very unpleasantly."

"Any normal and fair-minded person would have a perfect right to be concerned if a group of Romanian people suddenly moved in next door."

"today we are rushing through, at undue speed, an Association Agreement with the Ukraine, and as we speak there are NATO soldiers engaged in military exercises in the Ukraine. Have we taken leave of our senses? Do we actually want to have a war with Putin? Because if we do, we are certainly going about it the right way."

"The Labour Party hate the concept of Englishness. They have done for a very long time. New Labour can't even stand the concept of patriotism. They think the flag somehow is unpleasant, backward-looking and nasty. People like Emily Thornberry would rather we had that blue flag with 12 stars on it that comes to us from Brussels."

"Of course we're good enough. Switzerland has negotiated more global free-trade agreements than we have, without being part of the European Union, and Iceland, with a population of 300,000 people has signed its own tariff-free deal with China."

"A couple of times I've been stuck on the motorway and surrounded by swarms of potential migrants to Britain and once, even, they tried the back door of the car to see whether they could get in."

"There's not much point in having a United Kingdom if we're governed from somewhere else. We may as well become a satellite state of the European Union because that's virtually what we are. Our courts aren't supreme. Our parliaments aren't supreme, whether that's in Holyrood or in Westminster. This is not about Scotland's relationship with Westminster. This is about whether Scotland wants to be part of an independent UK."

"In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way. If the Remain campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it."

"We are being sold that this is all about trade and that the single market is soft and cuddly and lovely like a baby puppy. But actually it is a smokescreen for the real, simply proposition of this referendum. It's actually rather simple: do you wish us to be a self-governing, independent, democratic nation or part of a bigger, broader, European Union?"

"No deal is better than the rotten deal that we have at the moment"

"[Brexit] will be a victory for ordinary people, for decent people."

"Dare to dream that the dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom."

"Let June 23 go down in our history as our independence day."

"We have fought against the multinationals, we have fought against the big merchant banks, we have fought against big politics, we have fought against lies, corruption and deceit, and today honesty, decency and belief in nation, I think now is going to win. And we will have done it without having to fight, without a single bullet being fired. We'd have done it by damned hard work on the ground."

"[A second referendum is] the last thing I want to see. It's not a game of the best of three."

"I destroyed the British National Party - we had a far-right party in this country who genuinely were anti-Jew, anti-Black, all of those things, and I came along, and said to their voters, if you're holding your nose and voting for this party as a protest, don't. Come and vote for me - I'm not against anybody, I just want us to start putting British people first, and I, almost single-handedly, destroyed the far-right in British politics. If I hadn't been around, and done what I'd done, that strain of opinion would've been represented by (former BNP leader) Nick Griffin, and the BNP, and would genuinely have been motivated by hate. I'm not motivated by that, I'm not against anybody."

"[Referring to his life after ceasing to be Ukip leader earlier in 2016] I am not having to deal with low-grade people every day, I am not responsible for what our branch secretary in Lower Slaughter said half-cut on Twitter last night – that isn't my fault any more. I don't have to go to eight-hour party executive meetings. I don't have to spend my life dealing with people I would never have a drink with, who I would never employ and who use me as a vehicle for their own self-promotion. There are a lot of great people in Ukip. The problem is that Ukip has become a bit like the other parties: people view it as a means to get elected."

"All of us in our lives go through ups and downs and I regret the down that I am in at the moment. But I make this plea, particularly to the media - please leave my wife and children alone. Don't hassle them, don't intimidate them. They don't deserve it and it's simply not fair."

"Well, it's very successful politics, isn't it? You know, we are the turkeys that have voted for Christmas."

"If Brexit is a disaster, I will go and live abroad, I'll go and live somewhere else."

"It was always monstrous that she should be judged in the image of her father – an accusation many still make today. I wonder whether, had her surname not been "Le Pen", she might now be ahead in the polls. There is nothing she has said in this entire election campaign that I find unreasonable or extreme."

"[T]he time has come for me to get off the fence and say that I do want to see Marine Le Pen win on Sunday. She would make a good leader of France and is the right candidate for Brexit Britain."

"But if they don't deliver this Brexit that I spent 25 years of my life working for, then I will be forced to don khaki, pick up a rifle and head for the front lines."

"There are about six million Jewish people living in America, so as a percentage it’s quite small, but in terms of influence it’s quite big. Well in terms of money and influence they are a powerful lobby and America has interfered elections all over the world for decades, there is a degree of hypocrisy. [...] he makes the point that there are powerful foreign lobbies in the US, and the Jewish lobby with its links to the Israeli government is one of those strong voices."

"We have nothing to fear and that is the reason why we should only accept a clean and clear Brexit, not some fudge."

"The very idea of Tommy Robinson being at the centre of the Brexit debate is too awful to contemplate. And so, with a heavy heart, and after all my years of devotion to the party, I am leaving Ukip today. There is a huge space for a Brexit party in British politics, but it won't be filled by Ukip."

"Belgium is not a nation!"

"If we don’t leave on October 31, then the scores you’ve seen for the Brexit Party today will be repeated in a general election, and we are getting ready for it."

"A Johnson government committed to doing the right thing and The Brexit Party working in tandem would be unstoppable."

"The withdrawal agreement is not Brexit. It is a betrayal of what 17.4 million people voted for. If you insist on the withdrawal agreement, Mr Johnson, we will fight you in every seat up and down the length and breadth of the United Kingdom."

"When you get it out of the fridge it’s really appetising and delicious for a few days, but after a couple of weeks it stinks and is inedible."

"Do I find a seat to try get myself into parliament or do I serve the cause better traversing the length and breadth of the United Kingdom supporting 600 candidates, and I've decided the latter course is the right one."

"So this is it, the final chapter, the end of the road. A 47-year political experiment that the British frankly have never been very happy with. My mother and father signed up to a common market, not to a political union, flags, anthems, presidents, and now you even want your own army. For me, it has been 27 years of campaigning and over 20 years here in this parliament. I’m not particularly happy with the agreement we’re being asked to vote on tonight. But Boris has been remarkably bold in the last few months… he’s promised us there will be no level playing field, and on that basis, I wish him every success in the next round of negotiations, I really do."

"What happens at 11pm this Friday the 31st of January 2020 marks the point of no return. Once we’ve left, we’re never coming back and the rest frankly is detail. We’re going, and we will be gone. And that should be the summit of my own political ambitions. I walked in here, you all thought it was terribly funny but you stopped laughing in 2016. But my view of Europe has changed since I joined. In 2005, I saw the constitution that had been drafted… and saw it rejected by the French in a referendum. I saw it rejected by the Dutch in a referendum. And I saw you, in these institutions, ignore them. [You brought it back] as the Lisbon treaty, and boast you could ram it through without there being referendums. Well, the Irish did have a vote and did say no, and were forced to vote again. You’re very good at making people to vote again, but what we’ve proved is the British are too big to bully, thank goodness. So I became an outright opponent of the whole European project. I want Brexit to start a debate across the whole of Europe. What do we want from Europe? If we want trade, friendship cooperation, reciprocity, we don’t need a European Commission, we don’t need a European court. We don’t need these institutions and all of this power. And I can promise you, both in UKIP and in the Brexit party, we love Europe. We just hate the European Union."

"I hope this begins the end of this project. It is a bad project. It isn’t just undemocratic, it is antidemocratic. It puts in that front row, it gives people power without unaccountability. People who cannot be held to account by the electorate and that is an unacceptable structure."

"There is a historic battle going on across the west, in Europe, America, and elsewhere. It is globalism against populism. And you may loathe populism, but I’ll tell you a funny thing. It is becoming very popular! And it has great benefits. No more financial contributions, no more European Courts of Justice. No more European Common Fisheries Policy, no more being talked down to. No more being bullied, no more Guy Verhofstadt! What’s not to like. I know you’re going to miss us, I know you want to ban our national flags, but we’re going to wave you goodbye, and we’ll look forward in the future to working with you as a sovereign nation… [Farage is cut off by the chair]"

"What a nonsense, sadly said under parliamentary privilege. I had two small appearance fees back then, well under £5,000 [in 2016 and 2017]. Not appeared since. [...] I didn't do anything with RT in 2018."

"What Brexit has proved, I'm afraid, is that our politicians are about as useless as the commissioners in Brussels were. We have mismanaged this totally and if you look at simple things, simple things such as takeovers, such as corporation tax, we are driving business away from our country. Arguably, now we are back in control, we are regulating our own businesses even more than they were as EU members. Brexit has failed."

"We could have got it down to 50,000. If they put me in charge of it we would have got to 50,000 a year, no question about it, but they didn't."

"They have ignored what was said in that Brexit referendum and so now a bigger question emerges as to how we are going to change politics in this country."

"I wasn't in charge. Had we been a European country with proportional representation, I would have been in a position of authority to work with Government to try and achieve this."

"I got a phone call a couple of months ago to say 'we are closing your accounts', I asked 'why', no reason was given. I was told a letter would come which will explain everything, the letter came through and simply said 'we are closing your accounts, we want to finish it all by a date', which is around about now. I didn't quite know what to make of it, I complained, I emailed the chairman, a lackey phoned me to say that it was a commercial decision, which I have to say, I don't believe for a single moment. So I thought, well there we are, I'll have to go and find a different bank, I've been to seven banks, asked them all 'could I have a personal and a business account?', and the answer has been no in every single case. There is nothing irregular or unusual about what I do, the payments that go in and come out every month are pretty much the same, I maintain in my business account quite a big positive cash balance, which I guess with interest rates where they are is pretty good for the bank too."

"The truth is I've never received any money from any sources with any link to Russia."

"[These comments from Nigel Farage are not attributed to the Twitter video in the source] I have been given no explanation or recourse as to why this is happening to me. This is serious political persecution at the very highest level of our system. The establishment are trying to force me out of the UK by closing my bank accounts. It has certainly made me think — what does this mean for me [...] No one has told me why and the only thing I can think of are the completely false claims made against me using parliamentary privilege."

"I did 23 nights in that jungle. And it changed me. I've come out a completely different person [...] Because I am not afraid of anything now."

"[D]o I want to be an MP? Do I want to spend every Friday for the next five years in Clacton?"

"I think if you ask Tory party members right now they'd vote for me to be leader and not Rishi Sunak."

"The banking sector, now full of idiots, people are promoted not because of ability, but ethnicity or gender ... The white male – you lot – are going to feel the world's against you. Andrew Tate tapped into that. You're going to feel the world's against you, you're going to feel resentful and angry ... These are massive cultural battles."

"There is no Conservative party, it does not exist. Oh, their members are conservative and patriotic, their voters are conservative and patriotic. Their parliamentary party is not. We have Jacob Rees-Mogg. There are others – like Liz Truss and Mark Francois – who have views similar to me. They are a tiny minority."

"[Could he end up leading the main parliamentary opposition within five years?] It's possible. It never was before, but it's possible now."

"The most poisonous thing that ever happened to Ukip was getting lots of former Tory MPs to join the party and bringing with them their way of doing politics, which is constant warfare and back-stabbing."

"The Prime Minister has campaigned so woefully that I believe that we are now approaching a tipping point as voters realise that the general election is effectively over. Labour has won. The Conservatives will be in opposition, but not the Opposition. In their place, Reform UK now intends to be that voice of opposition in parliament and the country."

"I can only apologise that not all of our candidates have been to Eton, to Oxford, not all of our candidates are part of the London set."

"Have we had trouble with one or two candidates? Yes, we have. We paid a large sum of money to a well-known vetting company, and they didn't do the work. We have been stitched up politically, and that's given us problems. And I accept that and I'm sorry for that."

"The race thing is even worse. The idea we should give people jobs according to how suntanned they are, the colour of their skin."

"A guy who's my producer at GB News is half Indian. I'm darker than he is!"

"I don't want racism or sectarianism in my party and we will be sorting out candidate selection [...] We do not want to have this problem again. If we had got 25 we wouldn't have been entirely sure who or what we got. But we have five very solid, sensible people who will be able to really push on and make the case for Reform. There will be no embarrassments and we have the foothold we needed."

"We absolutely endorse (Sir Lindsay) entirely for this job. And it is, I must say, in marked contrast to the little man that was there before you and besmirched the office so dreadfully in doing his best to overturn the biggest democratic result in the history of the country. We support you Sir, fully."

"Well, I may not necessarily be the best advocate for [monogamous] heterosexuality and or stable marriage, having been divorced twice. But do I think family matters."

"[Reasoning why he had returned to the role of party leader] And I came up with three words: "family, community and country". They're the things that matter to me about absolutely everything. I have tried, in difficult circumstances, to make sure with both ex-wives that our children have had a stable upbringing, given the circumstances, as they can possibly have."

"Of course we need higher birth rates, but we're not going to get higher birth rates in this country until we can get some sense of optimism."

"Suddenly, here in America – after November 5 – there’s optimism, there's an upbeat mood, the beginning of a golden age. And it's all because of one totally extraordinary individual."

"[The Establishment] put Donald J. Trump through: years of endless court cases, media abuse, harassment of his family, debanking by financial institutions, and assassination attempts. Yet he has come through it all braver, stronger, and wiser. In my experience, he is simply the bravest man I know. We should all applaud him."

"At the time I was alleged to have made these remarks, one of your most popular weekly shows was the Black and White Minstrel Show. The BBC was very happy to use blackface - not just in the Black and White Minstrels, they did it in It Ain't Half Hot Mum."

"I cannot put up with the double standards of the BBC about what I'm alleged to have said 49 years ago and what you were putting out on mainstream content. So I want an apology from the BBC for virtually everything you did throughout the 1970s and 80s."

"Now all that's left of Hope and Glory is Brexit champion Nigel Farage’s Union Jack socks and the certainty that the Queen is the last person who still knows how to behave in public."

"This is all good news for Farage, who has capitalized on the boredom most Brits feel with the one-story news-cycle and formed his own Brexit Party to charge off the cliff."

"One of the most stupid adages for politicians to believe is my enemy's enemy is my friend. Putin closes down the free press, jails journalists with impunity and has enriched himself beyond the dreams of Imelda Marcos and has territorial ambitions. Farage is rapidly becoming the Berlusconi of Britain."

"Nigel Farage is still trying to whip up fear and hatred towards refugees who are fleeing from conflict. It was extremely ill-judged of him to describe himself as a victim."

"Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs."

"[Published on the Sunday following the 2015 general election results] In a typically graceless gesture, he swept out before the speeches had finished on the pretext that another candidate had not played fair, but as far as I can see, neither did Farage, really, ever. For someone who arrived in politics claiming to be a good bloke, a man of the people, Farage led a strangely vicious, backstabbing, angry and unpleasant campaign, finally going so far as to report me to the Kent police for a "blatant" breach of electoral law (what?) after I joked on Have I Got News for You that I had spent more time in the constituency than he had. The comment supposedly broke the law because it misrepresented his campaign — a claim so ridiculous the police rejected the matter before Ukip had put the phone down (this is also a joke and not to be taken literally). But it was the first hint Farage really had lost it."

"This is not to suggest that there is really such a thing as Faragism. There is just Powellism warmed up. Farage's gift was to refashion Enoch Powell's rather extraterrestrial persona as down-to-earth bluff English blokeishness. Undoubtedly, however, this was a repackaging of old content: Powell’s twin hatreds of immigrants and the EU. Powell visited Dulwich College in 1982, when Farage was in his final year there. The young man was spellbound. As he later recalled, Powell "dazzled me for once into awestruck silence". A decade later, when the founder of UKIP, Alan Sked, was contesting a byelection in Berkshire, it was Farage, as a volunteer, who had the privilege of driving Powell to a rally. This was one of Powell’s last public speeches and one of Farage’s first party political acts. Though it would not have seemed so at the time, it feels in retrospect like a neat moment of apostolic succession. Farage, more than anyone else, reanimated Powell’s undead spirit."

"He has been known far longer to the RT audience than most of the British electorate."

"Many people would like to see Nigel Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!"

"The only winners from a Brexit would be Nigel Farage and Vladimir Putin; who would relish a divided Europe."

"Farage, who earns his living as a City commodity-broker, is a man who often used words such as `nigger' and 'nig-nog' in the pub after committee meetings."

"Before Brexit we didn't have a small boats problem because we had 27 return agreements with European Union countries and we could return people. But thanks to Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and the Conservatives, we tore up those agreements when we left the European Union, and now we have this problem. I hope when he's on your programme you'll ask him to apologise."

"Nigel is a fiercely independent individual and is extremely good at what we have done so far. He has got messianic qualities. Will those messianic qualities distill into sage leadership? I don't know."

"We [Reform UK] have to change from being a protest party led by the Messiah into being a properly structured party with a frontbench, which we don't have. We have to start behaving as if we are leading and not merely protesting."

"Nigel Farage made a terrific speech in Clacton. In four weeks and three days, he had managed to convince more than 4 million people to vote Reform (only five measly seats, but what a triumph) and in the teeth of media hostility, too. Imagine what he can do in four-and-a-half years as a "bloody nuisance" in the Commons. (Who would dare rule out for him the two initials of MP being reversed in 2029?)"