Biography from wikipedia.com

Nigel Farage - Member of European Parliament (MEP)

Founding Member and Former Leader of United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)

Nigel Farage MEP

Former Leader of UKIP

In office 27 September 2006 – 27 November 2009

Preceded by

Roger Knapman

Succeeded by

The Lord Pearson Rannoch

Member of the Euopean Parliament for the South EastIncumbent

Assumed office 

15 July 1999

Born

3 April 1964 (age 45)

Kent, United Kingdom

Political party

UK Independence

Website

NigelFarageMEP.co.uk

Nigel Paul Farage (born 3 April 1964) is a British politician, and former leader of the right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). He is also a member of the European Parliament for the South East. He co-chairs the European Parliament's Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

On 4 September 2009, it was announced Farage would resign as leader of UKIP.[1] This was to enable him to concentrate on his efforts to become an MP at Westminster. If successful he will be obliged to give up being an MEP due to the dual mandate rule.

Early life and career

Farage was educated at Dulwich College before joining a commodity brokerage firm in London. He ran his own brokerage business from the early 1990s until 2002.

Active in the Conservative Party from his school days until the resignation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1990, he left the party in 1992 when John Major's government signed the Treaty on European Union at Maastricht. He became a founding member of UKIP in 1993 and has contested UK parliamentary elections for UKIP five times. He was elected to the European Parliament in 1999 and re-elected in 2004 and 2009. Farage is currently leader of the thirteen-member UKIP contingent in the European Parliament, and co-leader of the multinational eurosceptic group, Europe of Freedom and Democracy. He also contested the Bromley & Chislehurst constituency during the May 2006 by-election, organised after the Member of Parliament representing it, the eurosceptic Conservative Eric Forth, died. He scored third, winning 8% of the vote, thus beating the Labour Party candidate. This was the second-best by-election result recorded by UKIP out of 25 results.

Farage married first, in 1988, Grainne Hayes, with whom he had two children, Samuel (born 1989) and Thomas (born 1991). In 1999 he married the German Kirsten Mehr, with whom he has a further two children, Victoria (born 2000) and Isabelle (born 2005).[2]

Leader of UKIP

On 12 September 2006, Nigel Farage was elected leader of UKIP with 45% of the vote, 20% ahead of his nearest rival.[3] He pledged to bring discipline to the party and to maximise UKIP's representation in local, parliamentary and other elections.[citation needed] 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 (ten in all at this moment).

At his maiden speech to the UKIP conference on 8 October 2006, he told delegates that the party was "at the centre-ground of British public opinion" and the "real voice of opposition". Farage 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."[4]

At 10pm on 19 October 2006, Farage took part in a three-hour live interview and phone-in with James Whale on national radio station talkSPORT. Four days later, Whale announced on his show his intention to stand as UKIP's candidate in the 2008 London Mayoral Election. Farage said that Whale "not only has guts, but an understanding of what real people think". However Whale later decided not to stand and UKIP was represented by Gerard Batten.[livepage.apple.com5]

In September 2009 he announced that he would stand against John Bercow, the newly elected Speaker of the House of Commons, in his Buckingham constituency in the Next United Kingdom general election, despite a convention that the speaker is outside of party politics, and not challenged for re-election.[6]

José Manuel Barroso

During the spring of 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 Spiro Latsis. It emerged soon afterwards that this had occurred only a month before the Commission approved 10.3 million euro of Greek state aid for Latsis' shipping company.[15] It also became known that Peter Mandelson, then a member of the Commission, had accepted a trip to Jamaica from an unrevealed source.[16]

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.[17] The motion was successfully tabled on 12 May 2005, and Barroso appeared before Parliament[18] 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 Poettering as a result of his support for Farage's motion.

Electoral performance

Nigel Farage has contested several elections under the United Kingdom Independence Party banner:

1. ■Itchen, Test and Avon, European Parliament Election 1994 - 12,423 votes, representing 5.2% of total votes cast
   

2. ■Eastleigh by-election, 1994 - 952, 1.4%
   

3. ■Salisbury, 1997 general election - 3,332, 5.7%
   

4. ■European Parliament Election 1999 - elected member for South East England from party list
   

5. ■Bexhill and Battle, 2001 general election - 3,474, 7.8%
   

6. ■European Parliament Election 2004 - elected member for South East England from party list
   

7. ■South Thanet, 2005 general election - 2,079, 5.0%
   

8. ■Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, 2006 - 2,307, 8.0%
   

In the 2006 Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, Farage came third, ahead of the Labour Party candidate. This was the first time since the Liverpool Walton by-election, 1991, that a party in government had been pushed into fourth place in a parliamentary by-election on mainland Britain.

1. ■European Parliament Election 2009 - elected member for South East England from party list
   

Biography from europarl.europa.eu

Nigel Farage - Member of European Parliament (MEP)

Founding Member and Former Leader of United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)

Member of European Parliament/MEP profile

Nigel FARAGE

Europe of freedom and democracy Group

Co-president

United Kingdom

 

nigel.farage@europarl.europa.eu

United Kingdom Independence Party

Born on 3 April 1964, Farnborough

 

Member

Conference of Presidents

Committee on Fisheries [See]

Curriculum vitae

Secondary education. Has worked for British, French and American companies operating in the commodity markets, especially the London Metal Exchange (since 1982).

In the UK Independence Party: National Chairman (1998-2000); Chairman of the European Election Committee (2002-2004); Chairman, South East Counties (since 1999); national spokesman (since 2000).

Member of the European Parliament (since 1999). Vice-Chairman of the EDD Group (1999-2004).

Parliamentary activities

Questions [See]

Speeches in plenary [See]

Parlement européen

Bât. Altiero Spinelli

04F158

60, rue Wiertz / Wiertzstraat 60

B-1047 Bruxelles/Brussel

Tel. : +32 (0)2 28 45855

Fax : +32 (0)2 28 49855

Parlement européen

Bât. Louise Weiss

T06007

1, avenue du Président Robert Schuman

CS 91024

F-67070 Strasbourg Cedex

Tel. : +33 (0)3 88 1 75855

Fax : +33 (0)3 88 1 79855

Postal address :  European Parliament  Rue Wiertz  ASP 04F158  B-1047  Brussels

MP3 NOT For Redistribution

President of EU Jose Manuel Barroso’s noticeable mood change.

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