𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Two near-death experiences as a young man helped convince Nigel Farage that he wanted to do something meaningful with his life other than just chasing success in business – and that increasingly meant a preoccupation with politics. Having been born Nigel Paul Farage on April 3, 1964, at Farnborough Hospital in Kent, the son of shorthand typist Barbara and stockbroker Guy, he grew up at 4 West Hill, a smart detached Victorian house in the peaceful village of Downe about six miles from Orpington.

Today Farage considers himself very much a “Kentish boy” and his affection for the area is undimmed. He still owns a house in the vicinity, regularly walks the North Downs and, when time allows, enjoys a pint in the village. “We led an outdoorsy life. It was safe. There was a sense of freedom. We’d wander off to the woods for the afternoon,” recalls childhood friend John Hudson. “In those days, children knew a lot about flowers and trees and wildlife. Nigel and I certainly did. “In the summer you could smell strawberries growing in the fields. The farmer allowed us to pick them. And because Downe’s situated in a pretty high elevation, during the winter you could get snowed in and be cut off.”

It was to Downe and his mother’s house he was heading on the night of November 25, 1985, following post-work drinks when he suffered the first of his near-death experiences. On exiting Orpington station, Farage lit a cigarette, stepped out at a pelican crossing and was hit by a passing VW Beetle. He was thrown in the air before landing on his head. Driven by ambulance to Bromley General Hospital, his blood alcohol levels were deemed too high to receive a general anaesthetic. Then just 21, he had to be sedated until a surgeon could operate. Miraculously, there was no brain damage.

The most serious injury was to his left leg, which he was fortunate not to have amputated. A lump of bone still sticks out of it. He also broke several ribs, lost some teeth and has experienced tinnitus ever since. The accident was bad enough for him to remain in hospital until January 1986 and his leg remained in a cast for almost a year. He was also forced to give up playing golf competitively due to disruption to his hand-eye coordination.

However, there was one silver lining. During his confinement he met and fell in love with a nurse, Clare Hayes, who was to become his first wife. The second reminder of his mortality came on Boxing Day in 1986.

While standing at the bar of the Queen’s Head in Downe, he experienced excruciating pain in the lower left-hand side of his body. Two days later, in A&E, he was advised he had a twisted testicle and told to prepare for an immediate operation. Yet after being taken by ambulance to hospital in Farnborough, Farage was told there had been a misdiagnosis. The cause of the pain was, according to this second doctor, an infection and instead of an operation he would need a course of antibiotics.

After a few weeks the agony had not subsided and, alarmingly, his left testicle was swollen. After several more weeks, it was the size of a lemon and he could barely walk. He went to see his GP near Downe and was swiftly referred to an NHS consultant, who simply advised him to keep taking the antibiotics.

By now panicking, Farage rang his boss at commodities firm R J Rouse, where he was working as a broker, who advised him he was covered by the firm’s private medical insurance scheme. Through this, Farage saw a private GP in London and testicular cancer was diagnosed. His testicle was removed but secondary tumours could not be ruled out. Farage prepared himself for the worst. When his mother visited him in hospital and advised him he needed a haircut, he told her there was no point because he assumed he would have to undergo chemotherapy, which would make his hair fall out.

Then, quite unexpectedly, he was given the all-clear. After six months of blood tests, he was told the cancer had not returned. But the overall effect of the episode was lasting. Acknowledging that the NHS can deliver both the best and worst service, he recalled: “It has left me with a clear belief that without private healthcare I would probably be dead.”

His two brushes with mortality lingered in his memory and, knowing that time is a person’s most precious asset, he became convinced that he wanted to do something more worthwhile. They would not be his last near-death experiences – aged 46 he was lucky to walk away from a horrifying light aircraft crash in May 2010 while campaigning for UKIP.

Farage married Clare in July 1988 and the first of their two children, Sam, was born in January 1989, when Farage was 24. Around this time he also received a promotion at Rouse and was tasked with setting up a metals trading department. Despite this success, by his own admission, he was “drinking and gambling it away as fast as I made it” and “screwing up” his marriage because he was absent from home so much.

By now, he had begun to regard himself as a Thatcherite rather than a Tory and was troubled by those within the Conservatives such as Michael Heseltine who were plotting Britain’s move towards greater integration with Brussels. Farage had been sceptical of the implications of the Single European Act of 1986, which laid the ground for a single market across Europe. He also paid attention to the Eurosceptic speech Thatcher delivered in Bruges in November 1988, when she stated: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them reimposed at a European level.”

He became convinced decisions by unelected bureaucrats would erode democracy, national identity and sovereignty. As his job required him to trade with countries all over the world, he concluded that Britain would be crippled economically if it remained under the increasingly restrictive regulations of the burgeoning EEC.

Deliberately suppressing trading opportunities in a global market defied logic, as far as he was concerned. And a new sense of mission showed itself.

“When we left school he was a member of the Old Boys’ Golfing Society, but by the late ’80s we’d kind of dropped him because he became a bit of a Euro bore,” says schoolfriend Nick Owen. “I’m pro-Europe, and every conversation we had became about the EEC; every meeting ended up with me and him in the pub arguing about Europe.”

In the European elections of June 1989, a Green Party political broadcast dwelt upon the potential dangers represented by the Maastricht Treaty, which was to be signed in 1992 paving the way for European citizenship, a single currency and a European central bank – thereby establishing the EU as it is today.

The broadcast spoke of “the invisible men who’ll be governing your life and mine”, words which Farage took to heart. To the amazement of many friends, he voted Green. Farage never nursed a sincere desire to join the Green Party, but he shared its members’ zeal.

His restless spirit drew him to other ventures beyond work and politics. In 1990, he formed a group called Farage’s Foragers, which sought to blend visiting the First World War battlefields of northern France with a long weekend of good food and wine. Farage, a self-taught historian, would lecture on early twentieth-century politics while an invited author or journalist might speak on another subject. “We used to take a veteran with us if we could, especially from the Great War,” says one regular attendee.

Farage’s career at Rouse came to a shuddering halt one afternoon in late 1993 after he took a client for lunch. Pints of Black Velvet, bottles of Chablis and a decanter of port were consumed. The client then asked to be shown the trading floor of the London Metal Exchange and, inadvisably, Farage indulged him.

Once there, the client began behaving erratically, abusing dealers and making such a nuisance of himself he had to be removed. Having brought him as a guest, Farage was blamed. He resigned and early in 1994 set up his own firm, Farage Futures.

He hired a team of four to work with him and the office was open from 7am to 7pm so it could trade globally, meaning he got up at 4.45am to be in London. But he enjoyed the relative freedom he now had and preferred working under his own steam.

Still politics loomed large. Malcolm Freeman, who worked for him between 1998 and 2000, recalled taking telephone messages from some of the biggest names of the day.

“Norman Tebbit once rang and left a message. I also remember Margaret Thatcher ringing up. I think it was in 1999. I couldn’t believe it was her,” he said. “She left a message for Nigel, too. Looking back on it, I was at Farage Futures at a very successful time. Nigel had a couple of blisteringly good years and this helped fund his political career.”

Farage wasn’t necessarily the best trader, but he was the “most talented salesman”.

The other significant change in Farage’s circumstances was personal. He has said that by 1994, he and his wife, Clare, were both in love with other people. They had largely been leading separate lives and felt their relationship had run its course. There was, apparently, little resentment on either side but instead a realisation that they had married with excessive haste. Farage had never expected to be in a committed relationship in his twenties and was by his own admission too young for the obligations that came with it.

By 1997, they were divorced. He bought his wife a new house in Kent and she moved there with their two sons, to whom he had access at weekends. On the cusp of 30, and with a desire to continue forging ahead on his own terms so he would have more time to devote to politics, what he has called his “new life” began.

Thirty years later, now 62, he is the only person in the modern era to have steered two different political parties to victory in successive national elections, topping the poll in the European elections in 2014 with UKIP and in 2019 with the Brexit Party.

Between now and the summer of 2029, by when a General Election must be held, he will attempt to crown those achievements by sweeping to power as the leader of Reform UK. In the topsy-turvy world of 21st century British politics, who would bet against that outcome?

• Edited extract by Matt Nixson from The Farage Factor: Reform UK and the Remaking of British politics, by Michael Ashcroft (Biteback, £22)