Terrifying actuality behind Nigel Farage – from racism rows to views on ladies

He is the politician with the common touch, the pint-swilling, straight-talking man of the people who doesn’t need an autocue… or at least that’s what Nigel Farage would like you to believe.

The truth about the man who now leads Reform – after a swift boardroom coup ousted previous incumbent Richard Tice – is far less palatable. Farage’s entry into the election fray last week was Rishi Sunak’s worst nightmare, and within hours his party had started to eat into the Tory election ratings.

And yesterday the PM’s nightmare came true when a poll showed Reform had overtaken the Tories for the first time. “We are now the opposition to Labour,” bragged a a smug Farage at the start of last night’s ITV election debate.

But while he has clearly won over many disgruntled Tory voters by styling himself as the underdog who understands ordinary folk, the truth couldn’t be more different. And far from the likeable British patriot many see him as, Farage’s history shows his values are often the opposite to the ones most of us hold dear…

The career politician

When he announced June 3 he would run as a Reform candidate in Clacton, Essex, Farage raged against career politicians and out-of-touch elites. The irony was that he was probably the closest to both than anyone else in the room.

The very definition of a career politician, he has now led three political parties, was bankrolled as an MEP for 25 years, and has tried – and failed – to get elected to Westminster seven times. Keir Starmer was still a newly-qualified barrister learning the ropes when Farage first started getting an MEP’s salary in 1999.

And let’s not forget that Farage had initially declined to stand, saying he wanted to help Donald Trump’s re-election bid because “the American election is more important”. That too seems to have been to further his political career across the pond. “I do actually have a very firm job offer on the table from America, which is very, very tempting,” he admitted in a TV interview weeks earlier.

No ordinary bloke

Farage’s ‘ordinary bloke’ credentials don’t stand up to scrutiny either. Far from the working class underdog he styles himself as, Farage is the public schoolboy son of a millionaire stockbroker, who attended £35,000-a-year Dulwich College, one of Britain’s most elite private schools.

Before entering politics he followed his father straight into the City as a commodities trader and, with a trust fund based in an offshore tax haven, is today believed to be worth around £3.2million. But his personal fortune still didn’t stop him accepting £450,000 from multimillionaire Aaron Banks while he was an MEP to fund his lavish lifestyle, which included a £4.4m rented London home and a luxury car.

Fan of Putin

In 2014, just after Vladimir Putin invaded and annexed Crimea, and was criticised for supporting Syria’s brutal dictator Bashar al Assad, Farage named the Russian president as the leader he most admired. “As an operator, but not as a human being, I would say Putin,” he told an interviewer. “The way he played the whole Syria thing, brilliant.”

Farage, who appeared on the Kremlin-owned Russia Today TV channel 17 times between 2010 and 2014, also criticised “the unnecessary provocation of Vladimir Putin” by the EU and Nato during a speech to the European Parliament. “If you poke the Russian bear with a stick, don’t be surprised if he reacts,” he said.

Anti-foreigner

Farage once claimed “basic principle” of Enoch Powell’s infamous Rivers of Blood speech, in which the Tory MP said that in a decade of so “the black man will have the whip hand over the white man”, was correct. And throughout his life and political career he has whipped up fear and hatred towards immigrants.

In 2013, he said he supported Muslim immigrants who “integrate” but not those who are “coming here to take us over”. The following year, he said he felt “uncomfortable” when he heard passengers speaking in other languages on London transport, and that he would be concerned if Romanians moved in next door to him. And as he campaigned for Brexit in 2016, he was accused of a “blatant attempt to incite racial hatred” after unveiling an ant-immigration poster which shows a queue of mostly non-white migrants and refugees with the slogan “Breaking point.”

Clearly knowing blaming foreigners for our country’s problems strikes a chord with his potential voters, Farage kicked off Reform’s campaign in this year’s election by suggesting that British Muslims don’t share British values.

In his first election interview, and before he announced he was standing himself, he said: “We have a growing number of young people in this country who do not subscribe to British values, [who] in fact loathe much of what we stand for.” When asked if he was talking about Muslims, Farage responded, “We are”.

Racism

Accusations of racism have dogged Farage throughout his political life. Alan Sked, who founded and led the UK Independence Party until forced out by Farage, claims that when he objected to Farage’s decision to drop the policy of banning former National Front members from being Ukip candidates, he replied that they shouldn’t “worry about the n****r vote. They will never vote for us.”

Women

Women haven’t been spared either. Farage once said breastfeeding mothers should “sit in the corner”. And in 2014 he argued working mothers are “worth less” to employers than fathers. He added: “Maybe it’s because I’ve got so many women pregnant over the years that I have a different view [of maternity leave].”

In 2017, it was claimed Farage had systematically lied about an alleged affair with a former aide for more than a decade. Annabelle Fuller said she and Farage, a married man more than 17 years her senior, had a sexual relationship dating from 2004. Farage declined to confirm or deny the affair and has yet to speak about it.

Financial affairs

Farage condemned tax avoiders in a speech to the European Parliament, but has been accused of financial misconduct himself. In 2013 he admitted trying to avoid tax by setting up an offshore trust fund on the Isle of Man, discovered after an investigation by the Daily Mirror.

Farage said he paid a tax adviser to set up the Farage Family Educational Trust 1654 on the tax haven, but insisted he had not personally benefited from the account, telling the Mirror: “It was a mistake.” He has also been embroiled in several expenses scandals. In 2014 he admitted claiming more than £205,000 of taxpayers’ money from his MEP allowances for an office which was actually provided to him free of charge by a UKIP supporter.

His freeloading continued in the year after the Brexit referendum, when nearly half a million he received from British businessman Aaron Banks were not declared on Farage’s register of interests. And in 2018 his MEP salary was docked by £35,500 after a European parliament investigation alleged he had misspent public funds intended for staffing his office.

His retirement

When Farage ‘retired’ from politics in March 2021 few believed it was to do something that would benefit the country.. and they were right. He set up an online newsletter, Fortune and Freedom, which charged subscribers £199 a year to receive his tips on how to get rich.

The venture, in which he discussed the likes of Real Estate Investment Trusts, gold and stocks, was criticised by financial experts who warned customers to be mindful of the risky and speculative investments he was touting. He later joined GBNews, where his rage against migrants was only surpassed by his anger at having his account closed by Coutts – an elite bank exclusively for the super rich.