‘Ukip is far from over: we want to play our part in negotiations with Brussels’
Nigel Farage says he would gladly help a Brexit Tory prime minister, but is unsure of his long-term future
During the course of Wednesday night, torrential thunderstorms hit London and the South East. Huge quantities of rain fell in the early hours before the polls opened on Thursday morning, flooding railway stations and closing roads.
The downpour woke Nigel Farage at 2am and he could not go back to sleep. As lightning lit up the sky, his mind raced with thoughts of the referendum, a vote that marked the culmination of his 25-year crusade.
“I could not get to sleep to save my life,” he says. “I just lay there for three or four hours, going back through it all and thinking about when I first stood for Ukip.” In the Eastleigh by-election in 1994, Mr Farage “just crept past Lord Such” of the Monster Raving Loony Party by 164 votes, he recalls.
Now, after being derided as a loony and a racist (by David Cameron, among others), Mr Farage and his party have triumphed. His war with the political establishment has delivered an era-defining result that will lead to the UK’s pulling out of the European Union.
In 1994, his niche manifesto to withdraw from Europe attracted 952 votes in the Hampshire constituency. On Thursday, more than 17 million people voted for Brexit. After a night like that, what does Mr Farage feel?
“Relief,” he says. “What an amazing day. After a quarter of a century, we’ve actually bloomin’ done it. I don’t quote my children normally but one of them said to me, ‘Well, Daddy, at least 25 years of your life hasn’t gone down the drain’.”
We meet in the shadow of Westminster Abbey, in the makeshift offices that the Ukip leader used as a campaign base in London. By mid-morning on Friday, it is virtually deserted, the young team of Leave activists having found a pub to continue their celebrations.
Mr Farage, cigarette in hand, is contemplating the journey that has now delivered the dream of freedom from Brussels that is his, if it is anyone’s.
“I can barely take it in, really. I know it’s happened. But as I watched it at 2am, half past two, three, half past three, and started to realise it was actually going to happen, I just couldn’t believe it.
“To beat the entire Establishment – and it was the entire Establishment – Bank of England, the Treasury, and it was global too – Obama – and the threats – it shows you the disconnect between SW1 and the rest of the country is just enormous.”
Yet in the hours immediately following the result, the mood among other Brexit supporters, including Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, seemed sombre.
Shock waves hit the City, the pound slumped to its lowest level for more than 30 years and hundreds of billions were wiped from world markets.
Does this not give Mr Farage cause to worry that some of those warnings about economic disaster might just have been right?
“There’s nothing new here,” he says. “I think we are going into a mild recession anyway, completely regardless of Brexit. Our growth forecasts are down. Our public-sector borrowing is still not under control at all and everyone forgets that sterling is in a bear market, declining since July 2014.” If the Government does its job managing the economy, “there is no reason why we really couldn’t be benefiting two years from now” from the “increased global opportunities” that Brexit will bring, he says.
Mr Farage has a strong claim to be the most influential figure in British politics since Margaret Thatcher. Without his often lonely campaign, in which he was elected Ukip leader in 2006, transforming the party into a popular force, there would never have been a referendum.
The threat from Ukip, which attracted disaffected Tory voters, prompted Conservative MPs to launch repeated rebellions against David Cameron over whether to hold a vote.
After ruling out a referendum, Mr Cameron eventually relented, and his promise of an “in/out” poll kept the rebels quiet for a time.
Mr Farage says his long campaign would have been fruitless without the “vital” decision from Boris Johnson and Michael Gove to back Brexit and
‘I’m only 52… There are bits of me that say there are other things to do out in the big, wide world’
convert more Tories to the cause. The Ukip leader called the Prime Minister “Dodgy Dave” during the referendum campaign but, in victory, refines his opinion. “He’s not a bad man – he just found himself at the wrong end of the argument, at the wrong point in history,” Mr Farage says.
“I have – on a personal level – some sympathy for him.”
The Prime Minister’s resignation is critical to delivering the outcome that voters have chosen and whoever is the new Tory leader must come from the Leave campaign, he says.
“The wishes of the people now have to be carried out. It has got to be a Brexit prime minister. This now has to be a Brexit government. The Government has to get this job done before the next general election.”
Mr Farage clearly senses a grave danger in delay. “Look at the history. Only Greenland so far has managed to slip free – that was a long, long time ago,” he says.
In 2001, Irish voters rejected the EU’s Nice Treaty but were persuaded to accept it at a later referendum. Seven years later, Ireland again held a referendum – this time on the Lisbon Treaty – and again rejected it, only for it to be approved unchanged when a second vote was called.
Mr Farage makes the point that the French and Dutch rejected the EU constitution only to get the Lisbon Treaty by the back door. “The history is not very good.”
Does he have a preference among the many likely runners and riders to succeed Mr Cameron and negotiate Britain’s departure from Europe?
“I am happy if it’s Boris, I’m happy if it’s Michael Gove, I’m happy if it’s Liam Fox. A Brexit prime minister, that’s what I want.”
As critical to his project as the choice of the next PM is the team the new Tory leader assembles, which will be required to negotiate the exit deal.
Mr Farage wants to see a second government team formed. In addition to the negotiators sent to Brussels, others must begin building trade relationships with the rest of the world, “explaining to people we are now a global outward-looking country, not a little European one”.
The Ukip leader says he has a “very clear role” in witnessing the Brexit negotiations as an MEP, but would gladly be part of any new team that the next prime minister draws up. “There