Nigel Farage is the leader of Reform UK, a British political party. He is widely considered the man who has done more than any other to change Britain this century, having driven the country first into a referendum on Europe and then into a hard form of Brexit.
Mr Farage's hometown is Downe, in Kent. He attended Dulwich College, where he was involved in debating. His boast of descent from 17th-century Huguenot refugees is, according to his biographer Michael Crick, probably made up. On the paternal side his European roots are clearer: his great-great-grandparents, Nicholas and Bena Schrod, came to London from Frankfurt in the 1860s.
At the age of 21 he was hit by a Volkswagen Beetle, leaving him badly injured. A few weeks after the plaster was removed, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. A quarter of a century later, a plane carrying him crashed into English soil at about 80mph, leaving him inches from death and with near-crippling back pain. In his autobiography he writes that nearly dying made him more of a risk-taker. He worked as a metals trader, often for French banks, before entering politics. He met his German second wife while gallivanting around Europe as a trader. Following a separation he now has a French partner.
He began speaking at political meetings in the mid-1990s and went on to serve in the European Parliament. He took eight attempts to win a seat in the British Parliament. The proportional representation used for the European Parliament—a novel virus in Britain's first-past-the-post body politic—allowed his UK Independence Party a foothold and then a stronghold; generous EU funding for parliamentarians helped him bootstrap a political movement. Mr Farage was formerly a keen advocate of proportional representation when his parties were victims of the first-past-the-post system; now that polls suggest Reform UK could win hundreds of seats under it, he is less keen on change.
Mr Farage previously led the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which campaigned for Britain's withdrawal from the European Union. UKIP gatherings in that era resembled church bazaars, with members hawking home-made calendars and fruitcake from trestle tables. David Cameron, then prime minister, called UKIP members "fruitcakes". Despite its amateurism, the party succeeded in pushing Britain towards the Brexit referendum.
As head of UKIP, Mr Farage led the party to victory in the 2014 European Parliament elections, helping guarantee an in-out vote on Europe. After leaving UKIP, he founded the Brexit Party, which was later renamed Reform UK. He repeated the feat in 2019, leading the Brexit Party to victory and helping guarantee the hardest possible Brexit. He now leads Reform with the objective not merely of harassing the Conservatives but of replacing them as the dominant party of the British right. He is introduced at rallies as Britain's next prime minister.
Mr Farage has earned some £280,000 from his relationship with Direct Bullion, a gold dealer. At Reform's party conference in Birmingham in September 2025, a sign paid for by Direct Bullion hung from the ceiling asking "Are you safe from the wealth tax?" alongside a grinning picture of the Reform leader with a gold coin.
Mr Farage is the biggest British politician on TikTok, with 1.3m followers. He has been courted by J.D. Vance, America's vice-president, who hosted him at a barbecue during a visit to Britain in the summer of 2025.
Focus groups run by More in Common, a pollster, increasingly see Mr Farage as a "just do it" politician—someone who can cut through the "politics of can't", a pernicious, declinist sense that the British state can no longer build a railway, catch muggers or provide health-care appointments.
In the City and Brussels he used to visit strip clubs. With high office within grasp, he still jokes how lucky he is that the News of the World, a scandal-hunting tabloid, shut, and discusses Reform's shortage of leading female politicians with innuendo about his sexual prowess. The traditionalists in his party unveiled the slogan "Family, Community, Country" in 2024, which seemed like a Damascene conversion of a Thatcherite libertarian; in practice, he is relaxed about both sex and money—he likes trading, gambling, crypto and Dubai. At GB News's fifth-anniversary bash he pointed at the Palm Jumeirah and said: "I want Clacton to look like this."
Mr Farage has resurrected an old form of politics: booking halls, selling tickets and giving speeches. This style prevailed from the age of William Hogarth to Harold Wilson but petered out in the 1970s. He delivers raspy, staccato oratory without notes. Colleagues say he has learned from watching Donald Trump's rallies, though he has been practising the form since the mid-1990s.
Those close to him note that Mr Farage has changed over time. The old jaunty manner has given way to something harder, less jovial and more imperious. At rallies he stands straight and unsmiling, surrounded by bodyguards.
At a special-committee session on Capitol Hill in September 2025, Mr Farage invited members of Congress to compare Britain to North Korea over the Online Safety Act, attracting opprobrium. Reform UK has called the law "borderline dystopian" and promised to repeal it. Mr Farage misidentifies the cause of free-speech clampdowns: high-profile arrests such as that of the comedy writer Graham Linehan, who was arrested in September 2025 for allegedly inciting violence against transgender people (charges later dropped), were made under the 1986 Public Order Act and other laws on statute books for decades, not the Online Safety Act.
Mr Farage has long held that culpability for Russia's aggression towards its neighbours lies in part on Western leaders for overseeing the enlargement of NATO and the European Union. As a member of the European Parliament, MEPs of his UK Independence Party opposed a resolution in 2008 condemning Vladimir Putin's invasion of Georgia. He also opposed a resolution in 2011 criticising the conduct of rigged Russian elections, saying the EU had "no right to lecture other countries on democracy".
When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Mr Farage declared that Brussels had chosen to "poke the Russian bear with a stick". That same year, asked to name the leader he most admired, he cited Mr Putin: "as an operator, but not as a human being". He called Russia's intervention in Syria's civil war "brilliant". He was a frequent guest on RT, a Russian state broadcaster.
Mr Farage opposes the deployment of British troops to Ukraine as part of a multinational force, saying that Britain and France alone lack the manpower and equipment for an operation "that clearly has no ending timeline". He has, however, indicated that Reform UK would uphold Britain's commitments to help defend NATO's eastern flank: "once you're a NATO member, you must be defended." Alan Mendoza, his foreign-affairs adviser, runs the Henry Jackson Society, a think-tank hawkish on Russia, and says Mr Farage's views have evolved. Richard Tice, the deputy leader, joined a charitable aid convoy to Ukraine in 2024. On the other side, James Orr, a theology academic who advises Mr Farage, says mainstream politicians suffer from "Ukraine brain" and that the party should put "Kent before Kyiv".
At Davos in January 2026, Mr Farage proposed stopping interest payments on reserves held at the Bank of England. "Some of the banks won't like it," he said. "Well, I don't like the banks very much because they debanked me." His party claimed the policy could save £35bn a year. The idea attracted surprising allies, from left-wing Greens to centrist Liberal Democrats, and two former deputy governors of the Bank of England backed versions of it. Critics argue the sums are overstated—reserves are falling and rates declining, meaning the policy would probably raise only around £10bn a year by 2030—and that it would threaten central-bank independence by creating incentives for governments to lean on the bank to run large QE programmes funded by interest-free money.
In an address in the City of London on November 3rd 2025, Mr Farage abandoned Reform UK's previous commitments to cut taxes, declaring them unfeasible given Britain's public finances. "We are being mature, we are being sensible, and we are not over-promising," he told an audience of journalists and city lobbyists, saying his first priority would be retaining the confidence of the bond markets. He set out "relatively modest" tax reforms, including reversing recently imposed inheritance-tax levies on farms and family businesses, costing around £500m a year. In questions, he even said he did not rule out breaking the triple-lock, an expensive escalator for state pensions. He has casually tossed aside manifestos before—notably a promise by UKIP to repaint trains in traditional liveries.
Mr Farage promises a "net zero" migration policy and to leave the European Convention on Human Rights to speed up deportations. His 2024 manifesto pledged to raise the income-tax threshold from £12,570 to £20,000, abolish inheritance taxes and scrap emissions-reduction policies. He also promises to nationalise the water and steel sectors and restore fuel subsidies to pensioners. He cites Giorgia Meloni, Italy's prime minister, as an inspiration, praising her for turning the dial on social issues rightwards while remaining stable in office.
Reform UK resembles Geert Wilders's Party for Freedom in the Netherlands far more than it does the Republican Party in America. Giorgia Meloni provides a template for how a right-wing populist can take power; Jordan Bardella, the populist-right favourite to become French president, came to London for a love-in with Mr Farage. On Russia he is, by Britain's hawkish standards, quite the dove, but his views are well within the mainstream in, say, Italy. On health care he is one of the few British politicians to accept that the NHS is lousy compared with European systems and that a European-style insurance model is probably superior.
Mr Farage has long kept apart from the extreme right, turning down Elon Musk's money rather than back Tommy Robinson, a street agitator. In the European Parliament he refused to deal with out-and-out fascists; in his own telling he is a one-man cordon sanitaire.
In June 2025 Mr Farage proposed an eye-catching £250,000 flat tax for wealthy foreigners—similar to Italy's €200,000 flat-tax scheme—aiming to attract non-doms fleeing Britain's abolition of its non-domicile tax regime.
On July 21st 2025 Mr Farage launched a crime policy he called the "toughest this country has ever seen", pledging to halve crime within five years. The plan proposes recruiting 30,000 more police officers at £2.1bn a year, building five "Nightingale prisons" with 12,400 spaces on Ministry of Defence land, repatriating approximately 10,400 foreign nationals currently locked up, and deporting another 10,000 high-risk prisoners to countries such as El Salvador. Crime has risen in the past two years (driven by shoplifting and phone theft) but is still down 75% since 1995.
At a party conference in Birmingham on September 5th-6th 2025, Mr Farage presented his plans for a Reform government. Reform UK leads the national polls at 31%; a simple calculation based on uniform national swing suggests it would have an almost one-in-two chance of a majority if an election were held at that time. Mr Farage has a long record of feuds, which in office can be a recipe for paralysis. His party has four MPs.
Mr Farage has long traded on his friendship with Donald Trump, presenting himself as the president's interlocutor with Britain. However, his influence in Washington has been weaker than his supporters hoped. During Trump's state visit to Britain in September 2025, a former British official noted that "the relationship hasn't been Faraged". Trump fell out with Elon Musk; Musk in turn fell out with Mr Farage, meaning the transatlantic radical right proved less co-ordinated than some had expected. Some protesters at the September 13th far-right rally in London wore MAGA hats or held images of Charlie Kirk.
For a man often described as an English nationalist, Mr Farage is doing unexpectedly well in Scotland. He confesses no connection to the country beyond a love of golf and angling. Yet Reform UK polls second in Scotland, on 25%. It won a chunky third place in a by-election in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse in June 2025. Up to a quarter of Mr Farage's supporters in Scotland are pro-independence—"double-out voters" who would gladly smash both unions, British and European. He and Alex Salmond, the late Scottish first minister, were mutual admirers.
Appendix: A portion of a book, for which nobody yet has discovered any use.