Nigel Farage

Nigel Paul Farage (born 3 April 1964) is a British politician who has been the Leader of Reform UK and a Member of Parliament for Clacton since 2024. He had previously served as the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009 and from 2010 to 2016, and as a member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England from 1999 until the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union (EU) in 2020.

Farage was a member of the Conservative Party for 14 years, from 1978 to 1992. He has been a prominent Eurosceptic since the early 1990s and was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999. In 2004, he became the president of Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy. Farage was elected UKIP's leader in 2006 and led the party at the 2009 European Parliament election, when it won the second-most votes in the UK. He stood unsuccessfully in Buckingham at the 2010 general election before returning as UKIP's leader later that year. At the 2014 European Parliament election, UKIP won the most seats in the UK, pressuring David Cameron to call the 2016 EU membership referendum. At the 2015 general election, Farage was an unsuccessful candidate in South Thanet.

After the referendum, Farage resigned as UKIP's leader. In 2018, he co-founded the Brexit Party (renamed Reform UK in 2021), which drew support from those frustrated by the delayed implementation of Brexit by the Conservative government, and won the most votes at the 2019 European Parliament election, becoming the largest single party in the parliament. At the 2024 general election Farage again became Reform UK's leader, and won in Clacton. In July 2026, whilst under investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over undeclared gifts including one of £5 million, Farage announced his resignation as MP for Clacton, triggering a by-election which he won with 63.3% of the vote.