Nigel Farage

Early life and education

Nigel Paul Farage was born on 3 April 1964 in Farnborough, Kent, England, the son of Barbara née Stevens and Guy Justus Oscar Farage. His father was a stockbroker who worked in the City of London. A 2012 BBC Radio 4 profile described Guy as an alcoholic who left the family home when Nigel was five years old. Guy gave up alcohol two years later, in 1971, and entered the antiques trade, having lost his Stock Exchange position; the next year, endorsed by friends, he returned to the trading floor at the new Stock Exchange Tower on Threadneedle Street. Farage said in 2026 that his mother remarried a local man a few years later and that he is on good terms with both parents.

Farage's paternal grandfather, Harry Farage, served as a private in the First World War and was wounded during the Battle of Arras. It has been suggested that the Farage name comes from a distant French Huguenot ancestor. Both parents of one of Farage's great-grandfathers were Germans who immigrated to London from the Frankfurt area shortly after 1861.

Farage's first school was Greenhayes School for Boys in West Wickham, and he subsequently spent a short period at a similar school in nearby Eden Park. From 1975 to 1982 Farage was educated at Dulwich College, a fee-paying private school in south London. Politicians visited the school, including Keith Joseph, Edward Heath and Enoch Powell. Farage joined the Conservative Party in 1978 after Joseph's visit.

In December 2025 twenty-five former pupils and one ex-teacher at Dulwich College signed an open letter published in The Guardian asking Farage to apologise for alleged racist and antisemitic behaviour during his time there. Other former pupils who knew Farage said that they do not recall the behaviour described. Reform UK responded to the open letter by describing it as "a naked attempt to discredit Reform and Nigel Farage", adding that "the left-wing media and deeply unpopular Labour Party are now using 50-year-old smears in a last act of desperation". Farage denied making any of the comments that were attributed to him.

One Jewish classmate of Farage, Peter Ettedgui, alleged in 2025 that Farage repeatedly made antisemitic remarks targeting him, including "Hitler was right" and "gas 'em". The Guardian reported that eight other pupils have corroborated Ettedgui's account. Farage responded to the allegation by stating: "I categorically deny saying those things" which Ettedgui said was "fundamentally dishonest". Jason Meredith, who was three years below Farage at Dulwich College, alleged to The Guardian that he had been subjected to racist insults, including being called a "paki" and being told to "go back home". Cyrus Oshidar, who was in the same year as Farage, also alleged to The Guardian that Farage called him a "paki". When questioned by ITV News about the allegations of racist behaviour, Farage said: "I don't apologise for things that are complete made-up fantasies. Some of what I heard was just absolute nonsense by people with very obvious, if you looked, political motivation".

Early career

After leaving school in 1982, Farage obtained employment in the City of London, as a commodities trader. Initially, he joined the American commodity operation of brokerage firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, transferring to Crédit Lyonnais Rouse in 1986. He joined Refco in 1994, and Natixis Metals in 2003.

Political career

Farage had joined the Conservative Party in 1978, but voted for the Green Party in the 1989 European election due to their Eurosceptic policies. He left the Conservatives in 1992 in protest at Prime Minister John Major's government's signing of the Treaty on European Union at Maastricht. In 1992, Farage joined the Anti-Federalist League. In 1993, he was a founding member of UKIP. In 1994, Farage asked Enoch Powell to endorse UKIP and to stand for them, both of which Powell declined.

Former UKIP leader Alan Sked has alleged that, shortly before the 1997 general election, Farage urged him to drop the party's ban on former National Front members standing as UKIP candidates. According to Sked, when he objected, Farage allegedly replied that they should not "worry about the nigger vote. Nig-nogs will never vote for us". Farage dismissed this allegation as "complete rubbish". When questioned in 2014 about Sked's claim, Farage stated that only Sked had made that allegation and "in politics all sorts of disappointments happen to people and they throw mud".

On 12 September 2006 Farage was elected leader of UKIP with 45 per cent of the vote, 20 percentage points ahead of his nearest rival. He pledged to bring discipline to the party and to maximise UKIP's representation in local, parliamentary and other elections. In a PM programme interview on BBC Radio 4 that day he pledged to end the public perception of UKIP as a single-issue party and to work with allied politicians in the Better Off Out campaign, committing himself not to stand against the MPs who have signed up to that campaign.

In his maiden speech to the UKIP conference, on 8 October 2006, Farage told delegates that the party was "at the centre-ground of British public opinion" and the "real voice of opposition". He said: "We've got three social democratic parties in Britain – Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative are virtually indistinguishable from each other on nearly all the main issues" and "you can't put a cigarette paper between them and that is why there are nine million people who don't vote now in general elections that did back in 1992".

European Parliament

Farage was elected to the European Parliament in 1999 and re-elected in 2004, 2009 and 2014. The BBC spent four months filming a documentary about his European election campaign in 1999 but did not air it. Farage, then head of the UKIP's South East office, asked for a video and had friends make copies which were sold for £5 through the UKIP's magazine. Surrey Trading Standards investigated, and no offence was found. Farage was the leader of the 24-member UKIP contingent in the European Parliament, and co-leader of the multinational Eurosceptic group, Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy. Farage was ranked the fifth-most influential MEP by Politico in 2016, who described him as "one of the two most effective speakers in the chamber". He would be assigned office number 007 in the European Parliament.

On 18 November 2004 Farage announced in the European Parliament that Jacques Barrot, then French Commissioner-designate, had been barred from elected office in France for two years, after being convicted in 2000 of embezzling £2 million from government funds and diverting it into the coffers of his party. He said that French President Jacques Chirac had granted Barrot amnesty; initial BBC reports said that, under French law, it was perhaps illegal to mention that conviction. The prohibition in question applies only to French officials in the course of their duties. The President of the Parliament, Josep Borrell, asked him to retract his comments and warned of potential "legal consequences". The following day, it was confirmed that Barrot had received an eight-month suspended jail sentence in the case, and that this had been quickly expunged by the amnesty decided by Chirac and his parliamentary majority.

In early 2005 Farage requested that the European Commission disclose where the individual Commissioners had spent their holidays. The Commission did not provide the information requested, on the basis that the Commissioners had a right of privacy. The German newspaper Die Welt reported that the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, had spent a week on the yacht of the Greek shipping billionaire Spiros Latsis. It emerged soon afterwards that this had occurred a month before the Commission under Barroso's predecessor Romano Prodi approved 10.3 million euros of Greek state aid for Latsis's shipping company. It also became known that Peter Mandelson, then the British EU Commissioner, had accepted a trip to Jamaica from an unrevealed source at a debate on 26 May 2005. The motion was heavily defeated. A Conservative MEP, Roger Helmer, was expelled from his group, the European People's Party – European Democrats (EPP-ED), in the middle of the debate by that group's leader Hans-Gert Pöttering as a result of his support for Farage's motion. Farage persuaded around 75 MEPs from across the political divide to back a motion of no confidence in Barroso, which would be sufficient to compel Barroso to appear before the European Parliament to be questioned on the issue. The motion was successfully tabled on 12 May 2005, and Barroso appeared before Parliament.

2010 general election

On 4 September 2009 Farage resigned as UKIP's leader to focus on his campaign to become Member of Parliament for Buckingham at Westminster in the 2010 general election. He later told The Times journalist Camilla Long that UKIP internal fights took up far too much time.

Farage stood against sitting Buckingham MP, John Bercow, the newly elected Speaker of the House of Commons, despite the convention that the Speaker, as a political neutral, is not normally challenged in his or her bid for re-election by any of the major parties. He later said he "miscalculated" the popularity of Bercow in the constituency.

Farage came third with 8,401 votes. Bercow was re-elected with 12,529 votes and in second place with 10,331 votes was John Stevens, a former Conservative MEP who campaigned as an independent accompanied by "Flipper the Dolphin" (a reference to MPs – including Bercow – flipping second homes).

On 6 May 2010, the morning of the election, Farage was travelling in a two-seater PZL-104 Wilga aircraft with a pro-UKIP banner attached, when the plane crashed. His injuries were originally described as minor and non-life-threatening. His sternum and ribs had been broken and his lung punctured. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) report said that the banner became caught in the tailplane, forcing the nose of the aircraft down.

On 1 December 2010, Justin Adams, the pilot involved in the crash, was charged with threatening to kill Farage in a separate incident. He was also charged with threatening to kill an AAIB official involved in the investigation into the accident. In April 2011, Adams was found guilty of making death threats. The judge said that the defendant was "clearly extremely disturbed" at the time the offences happened, adding: "He is a man who does need help. If I can find a way of giving him help I will". Adams was given a two-year supervised community order, and in December 2013 was found dead at home in circumstances that police said were "not being treated as suspicious".

2010–2015

Farage stood again for the UKIP leadership in 2010 after his successor Lord Pearson had stood down, and on 5 November 2010 it was announced he had won the leadership contest.

UKIP forgot to put its party name on its candidate's ballot paper for the 2012 London mayoral election, Laurence Webb appearing as "a fresh choice for London". Farage described the mistake as an internal error. Interviewed the following Sunday by Andrew Neil and asked about "the game plan", Farage welcomed the "average 13% vote" across the country and stated that the party was preparing for county council elections in 2013, the European Parliament election in 2014 and a general election in 2015.

Asked what would happen to UKIP if the Conservatives made a manifesto commitment to a referendum on EU membership, Farage said they had already failed to honour a "cast iron" commitment to a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Farage said that UKIP aspired to come top of the European elections, but Neil suggested UKIP were still seen as "unprofessional, amateur and even unacceptable". In the same interview, Farage described Baroness Warsi as "the lowest grade Chairman the Tory Party has ever had".

In May 2013 Farage led UKIP to its best performance in a UK election. The party received 23 per cent of the vote in the local elections, winning 147 council seats, and placing it only two points behind the governing Conservative Party and nine points ahead of the Liberal Democrats. Farage was mobbed by well-wishers as he made his way to his favourite pub, the Marquis of Granby, for a celebratory drink. He called the victory "a real sea change in British politics". Subsequently, polling agency Survation found that 22 per cent of voters intended to support UKIP in the 2015 General Election.

In May 2013 Farage was interrupted by protesters during a press conference in the Canon's Gait pub on Edinburgh's Royal Mile. The demonstration was organised by groups including the Radical Independence Campaign and saw protesters vocally accuse Farage of being "racist", "fascist", and a "homophobe", and tell him to "go back to London". Farage made attempts to leave by taxi but was prevented from doing so, and was eventually taken away in an armoured police van while protesters continued to shout. He was trying to raise the profile of UKIP in Scotland ahead of the Aberdeen Donside by-election; the party at that point had no representation in the country, and took 0.91 per cent of the vote in the previous election though it won its first Scottish MEP the following year. During an interview with BBC's Good Morning Scotland radio show, Farage cut short the exchange, stating that the questions regarding the incident in Edinburgh were insulting and unpleasant.

2015 general election

In October 2013, Farage announced on the BBC's The Andrew Marr Show that he would stand for election as an MP at the 2015 general election, most likely contesting either Folkestone and Hythe or South Thanet; meanwhile he stated that his duty and preference was to focus on his current role as an MEP.

In August 2014 Farage was selected as the UKIP candidate for South Thanet following local hustings.

In October 2014 Farage was invited to take part in prospective Leaders' debates on BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky ahead of the 2015 general election. UKIP indicated that it would consider taking legal action were the party excluded, in contravention of established broadcast media rules, from televised Leaders' debates in advance of the election. The 7-way Leaders' TV debate was broadcast by ITV on 2 April 2015 from MediaCityUK, Salford Quays. Of three polls taken immediately afterwards, the ComRes poll had Farage as joint winner, alongside Labour's Ed Miliband and Conservative David Cameron.

In March 2015, Farage declared in his book The Purple Revolution that he would step down as UKIP leader should he not be elected as an MP; he stated his belief that it would not be "credible" for him to lead UKIP without sitting in parliament at Westminster.

On 22 March 2015, Farage was targeted by anti-UKIP activists who chased him and his family from a pub lunch in Downe, Greater London. His daughters ran away to hide and were later found to be safe. Farage, when asked what he thought about the incident, called the protesters "scum".

Farage was unsuccessful in his bid to become MP for South Thanet although he came second (beating Labour by over 4,000 votes), reduced the Conservative majority to less than 3,000, and gained over 32% of the vote.

Farage subsequently announced his resignation as the leader of UKIP, citing that he is a "man of his word" since he promised to resign if he did not win his seat, although he kept open the possibility of re-entering the ensuing leadership contest. On 11 May 2015 it was announced that Farage would continue to serve as the party's leader, with the BBC reporting: "Party chairman Steve Crowther said the national executive committee believed the election campaign had been a 'great success' and members had 'unanimously' rejected Mr Farage's letter of resignation". Interviewed about his continued leadership by the BBC the following day, Farage said: "I resigned. I said I'd resign. I turned up to the NEC meeting with letter in hand fully intending to carry that through. They unanimously said they didn't want me to do that, they presented me with petitions, signatures, statements from candidates saying it would be a bad thing for UKIP. So I left the meeting, went and sat in darkened room to think about what to do, and decided for the interest of the party I would accept their kind offer for me to stay and tear up the letter". He added that he would consider standing for parliament again should a by-election be called in a Labour-held seat.

Brexit

Farage was a key figurehead in the Brexit campaign of 2016, which succeeded with 52 per cent of the vote. Jean-Claude Juncker promptly told all UKIP members to leave the Parliament. During the campaign, Farage had made the suggestion of a future second referendum should the Brexit campaign be unsuccessful, but the result be closer than 52–48.

Farage initially supported Vote Leave (led by Dominic Cummings and Matthew Elliott, supported by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove) and Leave.EU (led by Arron Banks) in their campaigns to leave the EU, saying that they reached "different audiences"; however, he later grew irritated at Vote Leave's marginalisation of the UKIP-backed Grassroots Out movement, and their lack of explicit focus on immigration as an issue. He blamed this on the senior "apparatchiks" within the party (i.e. Cummings and Elliott) who purposefully marginalised Farage during the campaign, believing his attitudes on immigration deterred swing voters. The Daily Telegraph quoted Farage as saying that: "[Cummings] has never liked me. He can't stand the ERG. I can't see him coming to any accommodation with anyone. He has huge personal enmity with the true believers in Brexit".

Farage has argued strongly in favour of a British Independence Day being observed within the United Kingdom, on 23 June each year. On 24 June 2016, in a televised speech on the morning of the Brexit result, he stated, "let 23 June go down in our history as our Independence Day".

On 28 June 2016, Farage made a speech in the European Parliament in which he stated that a hypothetical failure for the EU to forge a trade deal with an exiting UK would "be far worse for you than it would be for us", to heckling and laughing by Parliament members. He said of his fellow MEPs that "virtually none" of them had ever done "a proper job" in their lives. Farage also said: "when I came here 17 years ago, and I said that I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union, you all laughed at me. Well I have to say, you're not laughing now are you?" He also predicted that Britain would not be the only country to leave the EU. In response, Guy Verhofstadt compared Farage's referendum posters with Nazi propaganda and credited the Brexit campaign with causing a multi-billion loss in the stock exchange.

Farage resigned as leader of UKIP on 4 July 2016. He stated, "It's right that I should now stand aside as leader. What I said during the referendum campaign is I want my country back. What I'm saying today is I want my life back. And it begins right now". He added that this resignation was final: "I won't be changing my mind again, I can promise you", apparently referring to his two previous resignations (in 2009 and 2015). Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, described Farage as a "retro-nationalist", Writing in The Spectator, journalist Rod Liddle described Farage as: "The most important British politician of the last decade and the most successful. His resignation leaves a hole in our political system. With enormous intelligence and chutzpah and a refreshingly unorthodox approach, he built UKIP up from nothing to become established as our third largest party and succeeded in his overriding ambition – to see the UK vote to leave the European Union". Diane James was elected as Farage's replacement, however she signed the declaration of acceptance with vi coactus after her signature which meant the Electoral Commission could not legally process the change of leadership. James opted not to accept the leadership, leading to Farage continuing as interim leader due to still being recognised by the Electoral Commission until Paul Nuttall was elected in November.

Reform UK

Farage has been leader of Reform UK since June 2024. Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party, is a right-wing populist and far-right political party in the United Kingdom. It has eight members of Parliament in the House of Commons, two members of the London Assembly, thirty-four members of the Senedd, seventeen members of the Scottish Parliament, one police and crime commissioner, and controls twenty-six local councils. It is to the right of the Conservative Party.

Reform is a limited company (Reform UK Party Limited) with fifteen shares. Farage owned 53% of the shares in the company, giving him a controlling majority. In August 2024, Paul Oakden was removed and Farage took over his share, giving him 60% ownership.

The incorporation of the Brexit Party in November 2018 was formally announced on 20 January 2019 by former UK Independence Party (UKIP) economics spokesperson Catherine Blaiklock, who served as the Brexit Party's initial leader. On 8 February 2019, it was approved by the Electoral Commission to run candidates in English, Scottish, Welsh and European Union elections.On 13 February, Farage confirmed he would sit in the European Parliament as a member of the Brexit Party.

On 22 March, he was announced as the new party leader, following the resignation of Catherine Blaiklock.

On 20 May 2019, a Brexit opponent threw a milkshake at Farage in Newcastle upon Tyne. The assailant, who was arrested at the scene, accused Farage of "spouting bile and racism". Farage tweeted about the incident saying: "For a civilised democracy to work you need the losers' consent, politicians not accepting the referendum result have led us to this". A month later, 32-year-old Paul Crowther pleaded guilty to common assault and criminal damage at Tyneside Magistrates' Court, where District Judge Bernard Begley ordered him to carry out 150 hours of community service and pay £350 compensation to Farage.

On 6 March 2021, Farage announced in an interview with The Telegraph that he was retiring from politics and resigning as leader of Reform UK, although he intended to continue "influencing the debate" through social media. He became the party's honorary president and was replaced as the party's leader by Richard Tice.

Financial allegations and resignation as Member of Parliament

In April 2026, it was reported that in early 2024, Farage was given £5 million by British cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based businessman. Within weeks of receiving the money, Farage announced his intention to stand in the 2024 general election, reversing his earlier position not to stand. Harborne, who had previously donated funds to the Conservative Party and given £1 million to Boris Johnson to run his private office after he resigned as Prime Minister, went on to become Reform UK's largest donor, giving the party £12 million in 2025. Reform UK responded by stating: "This was a personal unconditional gift that was given before he was elected. We are confident everything has been declared in accordance with the rules". This is disputed by other MPs, as the Parliamentary Code of Conduct requires relevant financial benefits received in the 12 months before becoming an MP to be declared. Farage said the money was for his personal security. He subsequently described it as a reward for campaigning for Brexit over many years. The undisclosed gift is being investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, while the Electoral Commission is considering whether to investigate. The Parliamentary investigation could conclude in recommending a suspension, which if of sufficient length would lead to a recall petition and possible by-election.

Weeks after receiving the £5 million, Farage bought a house for £1.4 million in Surrey. Farage's spokesperson said that Farage had paid for the house with his approximately £1.5 million fee from I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! in 2023 and that he had not used the money from Harborne. However, the Financial Times reported that corporate accounts for Farage's personal media company appeared to show the I'm a Celebrity money remaining in the company's account, and not being used.

The initial reporting about the £5 million was by The Guardian newspaper. Farage and Reform UK alleged that the information originated from a Russian hack of his phone and email—a statement which The Guardian's spokesperson described as avoidance of financial scrutiny. As of 25 May 2026, Farage had not contacted the National Cyber Security Centre over the matter. Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of the NCSC, described Farage's claim as "entirely unsubstantiated".

Further allegations followed that Farage had received benefits from convicted criminal George Cottrell and not declared them.

Public opinion

Farage is known for his social media presence, his fashion sense, as well as his form of British right-wing populism. He was ranked second in The Daily Telegraph's "Top 100 most influential right-wingers poll" in 2013, behind Cameron, and was also named "Briton of the Year" by The Times in 2014.

A September 2025 Ipsos poll of general election voting intention gave Farage's Reform UK 34% against Starmer's Labour's 22%. On who would make the most capable prime minister, respondents gave Farage (25%) a clear lead over Starmer (19%) and Badenoch (9%), though there was "little enthusiasm" for those party leaders (47% picked none of them). In polling around November 2025, compared to when Starmer became prime minister in July 2024, Farage's net approval rating increased from −30% to −16% whilst Starmer's dropped from +10% to −49%. By July 2026, Farage's popularity had decreased, with 22% approving of him and a net favourability of -46%.

Following his 2026 resignation as an MP and decision to stand again for election in Clacton, polling by Ipsos found that 54% of adults across Great Britain believed that Farage ought to leave parliament without running for re-election, versus 16% who felt he should contest the election, and 16% who felt he should not have resigned at all. 73% supported the continuation of the parliamentary inquiry, even if Farage were to win. The same week, another countrywide poll identified Farage as the "sleaziest politician in Britain". YouGov found that overall, 73% believe he is "very" or "fairly sleazy", the highest figure among party leaders (51% for Keir Starmer, 42% for Zack Polanski, 36% for Andy Burnham and 34% for Kemi Badenoch). Even among recent Reform UK voters, 40% believed that Farage was sleazy.

A late 2025 YouGov poll found that Farage is less popular among ethnic minorities than the wider public, with 13% having a favourable opinion while 79% have an unfavourable one.

Media career

Fox News

On 20 January 2017, the day of Trump's presidential inauguration, US news channel Fox News announced it had hired Farage as a commentator. He has since provided political analysis for both the main Fox News channel and its sister channel Fox Business Network.

LBC

From January 2017 to June 2020 Farage hosted The Nigel Farage Show on the UK talk radio station LBC on Monday to Thursday evenings.

In March 2019, Farage said on his show that Channel 4 journalist Jon Snow "should be attacked" for his "condescending bias" during coverage of a pro-Brexit protest. Ofcom decided that Farage had not broken their broadcasting code since he clarified that he meant a verbal attack.

On 31 October 2019, the day the UK was set to leave the European Union before the approval of a delay, Farage interviewed US President Donald Trump on his LBC show. Trump criticised Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit deal, saying it made it difficult for the UK to strike a trade deal with the US.

From March 2018 to July 2018, Farage hosted a podcast under the LBC banner entitled Farage Against The Machine, a play on words for the term 'rage against the machine', where he discussed the latest political developments and political news with political figures who Farage both agrees, and disagrees with. New episodes of the podcast were released every Friday, but the podcast was cancelled after the American rock music band Rage Against the Machine sent a cease and desist letter to Farage, demanding that Farage change the name of the podcast, which he was unwilling to do, prompting LBC to reluctantly trigger its cancellation.

GB News

In June 2021, Farage joined the British news channel GB News to host the Sunday morning political discussion programme The Political Correction. In July 2021, he began hosting the Monday to Thursday evening show Farage. As of August 2024 Farage was earning nearly £1.2m a year from GB News. Farage later said he did not get a fixed monthly fee from GB News, but was paid varying amounts as a contractor. The sum disclosed to the register was a gross sum, including VAT, for work carried out since 1 April 2024, and also included services such as media consultancy, in addition to his work as television presenter.

Cameo videos

Cameo customers pay a fee for a chosen celebrity, Farage in this case, to produce a short video clip for them, of usually less than a minute, based on an outline script that they provide. Farage joined Cameo in 2021 and by 2026 had published more than 4,000 personalised clips. From the start of his tenure as an MP in 2024, until early 2026, Farage disclosed earnings of more than £80,000 from these Cameo recordings. Liberal Democrat MP Max Wilkinson criticised Farage, alleging that "[f]or the right price, he will apparently say almost anything".

Due to Farage's openness to accepting almost any Cameo payments, he has become a victim of a number of pranks, though these have also included him referencing more innocent Internet memes. For example, in 2021, he was made to refer to various Irish republican slogans, as well as citing internet memes such as Among Us and Big Chungus.

In March 2026, The Guardian reported that in the videos, Farage had been paid to repeat some extremist slogans, support a convicted far-right rioter, reference antisemitic conspiracy theories, and endorse an event for Canadian neo-Nazi group Diagolon. In response a spokesperson for the Reform MP said: Farage had used the platform "in good faith and without knowledge of the individuals involved beyond what is written for him" and that "Mr Farage has recorded many thousands of videos for genuine supporters to celebrate weddings, congratulate friends or send novelty messages. At that scale, the occasional mistake can occur". Farage subsequently stopped offering the service, with Reform UK saying it was "paused for security reasons".

Farage also used Cameo videos to call attention to cryptocurrency, which he said was "being ignored in this general election". In a video announcement, he expressed enthusiasm for the memecoin named after him, noting that while speculative, it was "gathering support from the Reform UK cryptocurrency community". The so-called Farage coin was linked to a pledge to donate money to Reform UK upon reaching a certain valuation.

I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!

In November 2023, Farage appeared on the twenty-third series of the UK reality TV programme I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!. The Independent reported that ITV offered Farage a fee of up to £1.5 million to take part, which would make him the highest paid contestant to date, in the history of the show. Farage finished in third place.

Fortune and Freedom

In 2020, Farage established a financial newsletter, Fortune and Freedom, which describes itself as "unregulated product published by Southbank Investment Research Limited". On 28 March 2021, Dutch Green Business announced Farage had been appointed to the firm's advisory board. The newsletter discusses issues related to pension investments.

Baxter Laois

In September 2022, Farage introduced a range of three gins made in Cornwall. By September 2025, the company selling it (Baxter Laois, owned by Laure Ferrari) was reportedly indebted with about £11,000 owing against assets of less than £1,000, and due to be struck off from the Companies House register. The petition to wind up the company was subsequently withdrawn.

Political positions

Farage's personal views and his leadership of UKIP and Reform UK has been described as right-wing populist, Eurosceptic and anti-immigration by journalistic sources and news media.

Farage has been associated with euroscepticism throughout his political career and was described as "The face of Euroscepticism in the UK" by a BBC News profile in 2017. Farage was a member of the Conservative Party but left in protest of John Major's signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. He has supported Britain's withdrawal from the European Union and has advocated for leaving the European Convention of Human Rights.

Farage has been associated with anti-immigration politics and consequently has been labelled as a far-right politician by the French newspaper Le Monde. Other political commentators and analysts, e.g. Stephen Daisley, have disputed the "far-right" label, while Farage himself has rejected it. In 2024, The Daily Telegraph referred to Farage and Reform UK as centre-right while The Independent political editor David Maddox has observed that Farage has adopted traditionally left-wing politics on certain economic issues since the 2020s alongside right-wing stances on national identity and immigration.

Farage feels that Britain has a "two tier culture where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities". He suggested, in response to the murder of Henry Nowak, that two-tier policing resulted from anti-racism guidance.

In other areas, Farage has voiced scepticism about climate change. In foreign policy, he suggests NATO and EU expansion provoked Russia's invasion of Ukraine while expressing his personal dislike of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In American politics Farage is a supporter of Donald Trump.

Farage has expressed his displeasure with the terms under which abortions are allowed in the UK, saying "I am pro-choice, but I think it's ludicrous, utterly ludicrous, that we can allow abortion up to 24 weeks".

Personal life

Between 2015 and 2017 Farage lived in Single Street, a hamlet in the London Borough of Bromley, "around the corner from his mother". As of May 2025, Farage owns several properties, including one worth around £1 million in Downe, two houses in Lydd-on-Sea, and a property in Tandridge. He said in November 2024 that he intended to live in Clacton-on-Sea, within his constituency, in a home that he said had been bought, for security reasons, in the name of his partner, Laure Ferrari.

He has been married twice. In 1988 he married Gráinne Hayes, an Irish nurse with whom he has two sons. They divorced in 1997. In 1999 he married Kirsten Mehr, a German national; the couple have two daughters. In April 2018 Farage said that the children have both British and German passports and that they speak "perfect German". He has made reference to his German wife in response to criticisms that he is "anti-Europe", while he himself says he is merely anti-EU. Farage employed his wife Kirsten as his parliamentary secretary and in April 2014 he said that "nobody else could do that job". In February 2017 his wife told the Press Association that they were living "separate lives" and that Farage had "moved out of the family home a while ago". In May 2017, he described himself as "53, separated, skint", citing 20 years of campaigning as the reason for both. In 2023 it was reported that Farage had been in a relationship with the French politician Laure Ferrari for several years. They first met in 2007 when Ferrari was working as a waitress.

On 25 November 1985, Farage was hit by a car after a night out, and suffered injury to his head and left leg, the latter nearly requiring amputation. He was in casts for 11 months, but recovered, and the nurse who treated him became his first wife. On 26 December 1986, Farage first felt symptoms of what was later discovered to be testicular cancer. He had the left testicle removed, and the cancer had not spread to any other organs.

Farage's memoir Fighting Bull (Flying Free in paperback) was published in 2010. It chronicles the founding of UKIP and his personal and political life. A second book, The Purple Revolution: The Year That Changed Everything, was released by Biteback Publishing in 2015.

Farage is a keen cricket fan and has appeared on Test Match Special. He appeared in an advertisement for the bookmaker Paddy Power ahead of golf's 2014 Ryder Cup. However, due to spinal injuries since his 2010 plane crash, he cannot play golf. Farage is also an association football fan, and supports Crystal Palace FC. He likes to relax by fishing alone at night on the Kent coast. Farage is a smoker and also fond of beer, this forming part of his public image. Farage was until 2021 a member of the East India Club, an exclusive private gentlemen's club in St. James's Square in London.

Coutts account

In June 2023, Farage said that his account with the private bank Coutts was to be closed. He was offered a standard bank account by Coutts's parent group, NatWest, in the closure notice he received. Farage said he was then refused personal and business accounts at seven other UK banks. When pressed by Farage to reveal why, NatWest said that he no longer met the Coutts eligibility criteria as his account balance had dropped below £1 m following the expiry of his mortgage.

The story was picked up by the UK press. It was later revealed that Farage's account had been closed partly because Coutts felt that his beliefs and values did not align with theirs. In an internal dossier, Coutts wrote that he "is at best seen as xenophobic and pandering to racists" and considered a "disingenuous grifter".

In a front-page story on 20 July, The Daily Telegraph reported that the Coutts CEO, Dame Alison Rose, had dined with Simon Jack, the business editor for BBC News, on the evening before he published an article saying that the decision had been "for commercial reasons". Peter Bone MP and David Jones MP were reported as calling for Rose to resign.

In October 2023, it was reported that the ICO ruled that Rose had twice violated the law, as it upheld two parts of Farage's complaint concerning the treatment of his personal data; but the ICO later withdrew the comment about Rose, and apologised to her, saying that their ruling related only to NatWest. In the same month, an investigation by lawyers Travers Smith, appointed by NatWest, found that the bank had acted in a "lawful" manner when it closed Farage's account, but had "failed to treat him fairly". The Financial Conduct Authority said that the report by Travers Smith revealed "potential regulatory breaches" by the bank. Farage described the Travers Smith report as a "whitewash".

In popular culture

The actor Kevin Bishop portrayed Farage in the 2016 mockumentary Nigel Farage Gets His Life Back on BBC Two.

Farage is portrayed by Paul Ryan in the 2019 film Brexit: The Uncivil War.

In 2026 Farage was portrayed by Peter Serafinowicz in a cold open sketch on the inaugural series of Saturday Night Live UK.