Who is Nigel Farage? – BBC News

Mr Farage quit the Conservative party after the UK signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which called for an “ever-closer union” among European nations.

He was a founding member of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), then a tiny fringe group and first ran unsuccessfully for parliament in 1994 in the Eastleigh by-election.

He was elected to the European Parliament, as MEP for South-East England, in 1999 and stayed there until 2020.

After becoming leader of UKIP for the first time in 2006, he became a familiar face on TV and achieved a breakthrough at the 2009 European elections, where UKIP got more votes than Labour and the Lib Dems.

He played a leading role in the 2016 Brexit referendum. After the vote in favour of the UK leaving the EU, he resigned from UKIP.

In the period after the UK voted to leave the EU, but before it left, he launched the Brexit Party in April 2019.

After Brexit, his party changed its name to Reform UK. Mr Farage left front-line politics in 2021 and embarked on a television career as a presenter on newly established GB News.

He took part in reality TV series I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! in 2023 and was in the news when his bank account at Coutts was closed.

Mr Farage had spent most of the lead up to the 2024 UK general election campaign insisting he would not stand for the House of Commons.

But on 3 July, he said he will be Reform UK’s candidate in Clacton and take over as the party’s leader once again.