Not even Nigel sinks pints at 10am (well not on a Monday)

NOT many politicians leave the scene with a smile on their faces, but Nigel Farage managed it. He quit as Ukip leader yesterday and looked distinctly perky to be doing so.

‘I’ve done my bit,’ he said, voice upbeat, a little lift in his toes. With a mirthful shake of the shoulders, he argued he ‘couldn’t possibly’ achieve more than he did with last month’s stunning Brexit vote.

‘During the referendum I said I wanted my country back. What I’m saying today is, “I want my life back!” – and it begins right now, thank you.’

With that he skipped off Emmanuel church centre’s stage to shake hands with Ukip chairman Steve Crowther.

Had the hour been any later, he might have then made for the nearby Westminster Arms for a beer, but not even Brother Farage sinks pints at 10.10am. Well. Not on a Monday in early July. This is a man of stern discipline. He’d wait until at least 11am, thank you.

It was only understandable for him to try to grab himself some attention as Westminster continued to have a collective attack of the vapours. The current political upheavals are in large part thanks to Mr Farage and his underestimated ‘People’s Army’. They’re going to miss him.

He hinted that the pressures had at times been awful. Success had ‘come at a cost to me and those around me’, he said. Other politicians might at this point have done a lower-lip wobble and thanked their loved ones, but Mr Farage is too English for that touchy-feely stuff.

Not that he is giving up politics entirely. He said he looked forward to helping various independence movements in Europe.

‘You haven’t seen the last country that wants to leave the EU,’ he said, impishness in his voice.

Fashion note: though it was a humid day, Mr Farage’s longstanding press aide and smoking buddy Gawain Towler was making no concessions to the warmth. To do so, in Towler’s eyes, would have been faintly metrosexual. And so he was buttoned proudly into a threepiece country rig, the waistcoat and sturdy brogues worthy of a terrier-man on the Brecon Beacons.

Half an hour later, the press pack had decamped to a smallish room at the Cinnamon Club, a curry house round the back of Westminster Abbey.

This was where Andrea Leadsom was about to make her Tory leadership launch.

Her MP supporters included Iain Duncan Smith, Peter Lilley, John Redwood, Owen Paterson, Stewart Jackson, Steve Baker, Julian Lewis.

Also there: Tim Bell, once Mrs Thatcher’s bright young man, these days a more slick-haired, tobaccoey presence.

One of the Leadsom campaign banners said ‘@andrealeadsom’ with a line under the ‘real’ in the middle. They are presenting Energy Minister Leadsom as a rooted outsider – someone, as Defence Minister Penny Mordaunt put it, who exudes ‘warmth and empathy and communication skills’. Was she trying to suggest that Theresa May lacks those skills? I am shocked.

MRS Leadsom went out of her way to praise George Osborne, Labour Leave campaigner Gisela Stuart and even Michael Gove (she praised his pupil-premium policy).

The one person she should perhaps also have complimented was Boris Johnson.

Later, in the Commons, I saw a Mrs May aide, George Hollingbery (Con, Meon Valley), sidle up to Boris’s friend Kit Malthouse (Con, NW Hampshire). What a schmoozer the millionaire Hollingbery is: polished loafers, grey socks, buttoned jacket, pink shirt, dark suntan, slicked hair and general air of raffish intrigue. A deputy chief whip in the making?

As for Mrs Leadsom, she did well, though I wish she would not start answers with the word ‘so’.

She pinched some Gove ideas about ending fat-cat excesses. She had a good riff about early intervention with sink-estate children. She was cheerful about the referendum result.

And on the North East of England, she said: ‘I will not forget that Sunderland was one of the first to vote for Leave.’

Tory activists might well warm to her.