Nigel Farage
Why it’s time for me to quit politics for good
NIGEL FARAGE last night quit politics after 30 years leading insurgent political parties, pledging to devote himself to fighting Britain’s culture wars.
The Sunday Telegraph can also reveal Laurence Fox, leader of the new Reclaim Party, is running for office as Mayor of London on an anti-Woke and anti-Lockdown ticket as part of the fight against “extreme political correctness”.
The double announcement marks an escalation in the new political front over Britain’s heritage and struggles over freedom of speech.
In an interview with this weekend’s Chopper’s Politics Podcast, Mr Farage, 56, announced the end of his political career, which saw him lead the UK Independence Party, the Brexit Party and latterly the Reform UK party.
He said: “I have knocked on my last door. There is no going back – Brexit is done. That won’t be reversed. I know I’ve come back once or twice when people thought I’d gone, but this is it. It’s done. It’s over.”
Mr Farage denied that he would mount another comeback – he famously quit after the 2016 referendum saying “I want my life back” – but then reformed the Brexit Party two years later to win the 2019 European Parliament elections. He said: “Now’s the moment for me to say I’ve knocked on my last door. I’m going to step down as the leader of Reform UK.
“I’ll have no executive position at all. I’m quite happy to have an honorary one, but party politics, campaigning, being involved in elections, that is now over for me because I’ve achieved the one thing I set out to do: achieve the independence of the UK.”
Mr Farage insisted that he had no plans to retire and would be trying to influence the debate on China’s influence in the UK and the battles over the so-called culture wars.
Mr Farage said the “woke agenda” was “literally the indoctrination of our children from primary school all the way through university with a completely different interpretation of history. “I see our communities being divided more than ever by this agenda. And I’m very worried about it. I want to fight all those things.
“I have built up over these years quite a considerable social media platform. I’ve got reach. So I want to go on influencing the debate. I want to go on changing debate. But I can do that without going out and fighting elections.”
Mr Farage – credited as one of the most influential politicians of the past three decades – said it had been an “honour” to lead the campaign that led to the UK leaving the EU.
He said: “Brexit was a grassroots rebellion and it was my honour to lead those grassroots. Without a single person of real influence in this country advocating leaving the EU, we still got to the stage when a referendum was called. And that is a remarkable thing.”
Asked what advice he would give to other new “insurgent parties”, he said: “The greatest quality politically that you need to lead an insurgent party is patience. You’ve got to bide your time, and you’ve just got somehow to be impervious to all the criticism. The
‘I know I’ve come back once or twice when people thought I’d gone, but this is it. It’s done. It’s over’
really difficult bit is the way that it affects those close to you, your family, your children.”
That came as Mr Fox announced he would fight Sadiq Khan in the forthcoming Mayor of London elections vowing to “offer a voice for those who are being dominated into silence”.
Mr Fox’s run for office is being funded entirely by a new single donation from former Tory donor Jeremy Hosking. Electoral law caps campaign spending at £420,000. Mr Fox will also fight on a platform for lifting lockdown as soon as he is elected in May rather than waiting until June, when all restrictions are due to be removed.
New polling showed 24 per cent of voters in the capital thought Mr Khan was “too woke” – although 27 per cent found him “not woke enough”.
The survey, conducted by Savanta ComRes among 1,000 people in London in late February for the Reclaim Party, found that 25 per cent of Londoners wanted lockdown lifted by the end of this month; 58 per cent wanted it gone by the end of May.
Mr Fox said: “I am standing for London mayor. The Government has said vaccines are working, hospitalisations and deaths are tumbling, but we are still being told we won’t be able to resume normal life until midsummer at the earliest. I want London – and indeed the rest of the country – to be allowed to get back to work and play immediately – not by late June.”