4 ms·

Brexit: UKIP Leader Nigel Farage Resigns

36 points by peterkshultz 10y ago

atmosx 10y ago
Doesn't make sense, at all.
- satysin 10y ago
  Sure it does. Nobody had plan for what "Brexit" actually means for the country. Farage just shouted louder and louder for 25 years until a combination of things swung things his way. Now real, difficult work has to be done he wants out of the spotlight as quickly as possible.
  - estefan 10y ago
    I wonder if BoJo and Farage are foreign plants... If the Tories have any sense they'll drag this out for a year or two, get a rubbish set of new proposals, give us a new referendum and people will vote to stay this time.
    - ProxCoques 10y ago
      That's probably as good a bet as anything else right now.
- jamiethompson 10y ago
  No one ever expected that the public would be daft enough to actually vote to leave the EU. I very much doubt whether success was ever part of the plan. He's fucked the country and his self.
  - atmosx 10y ago
    I find that extremely odd. It's like an engineer who doesn't look at that data at hand: Since 2005 every attempt to put a referendum (e.g. France, Netherlands, Greece) on any matter that had to do with the EU, ended up with anti-EU vote win. So if you look closer at the data, then you'll see that anti-EU sentiment is way stronger then pro-EU throughout Europe. I believe that people higher-up the food-chain have access and a say in the social and mass media. This creates a strong reality distorted (like London vs Rest of England).
    - hjrnunes 10y ago
      you must be some kind of scientific racist /sarcasm
- DoubleGlazing 10y ago
  Farage is smart, very smart and he knows exactly what he is doing. He has spent the last 20-odd years screaming about how bad the EU is saying it is undemocratic, wasteful, an affront to national sovereignty, promotes uncontrolled immigration and so on. Yet none of his or UKIPs arguments really stand up to serious scrutiny. He has been very good at redirecting the anger of marginalised communities away from the real source of their woes and towards the EU. He has made people think that the EU is to blame for their problems, when in fact those problems are the responsibility of the UK government. He has portrayed himself as a man of the people with the pint and ciggie, despite the fact that he is anything but. He has managed to get the support of traditional Labour supporters despite the fact that he is as hard-right as they come. That's quite an achievement. Don't forget that UKIP was founded as a fairly Liberal euroscpetic party. The original leader Alan Sked was forced out by Farages mob for being too intellectual. Farage is a master manipulator and he knows that winning the referendum was only the first stage in a long process that will go on for years. He's taking a back seat now to avoid being a part of the current political maelstrom, but you can be certain he'll reappear when he knows he can take advantage of the situation. I also wouldn't be surprised if he is also pulling a few political string behind the scenes.
sidcool 10y ago
Looks like he understood what a mess he has created. It's more of 'I am getting out before shit hits the fan' type decision.
- hellodevnull 10y ago
  So many comments in this thread regurgitating the same drivel, which by the way adds no value to the discussion. A man spends decades of his life working on something, and now you're telling me, after he achieves his goal, that he's having an epiphany and no longer believes in it? There's a political bubble here on HN (a lot of hate for Brexit/UKIP), but that's not a reason to be able to make silly comments like this.
  - sidcool 10y ago
    I do agree that mine was a quick, to of my mind comment . But it looks suspicious at first glance. He is not all that high and mighty as he's sounding.
cm2187 10y ago
I presume UKIP will dissolve too. The party had the unique goal of getting the UK to leave the EU. Now that they achieved it, their raison d'etre is gone.
- lucozade 10y ago
  I would be very surprised if that happened. They received 4mm votes in the last general election. 17mm people voted for Brexit. I would fully expect that the UKIP leadership would look at that as a potential 13mm people that they can reach. The traditional left-right politics is creaking in the UK and parties like SNP and UKIP have tapped into that. Even though both started as, effectively, single issue parties, SNP have morphed into a mainstream political party and I see no reason why UKIP wouldn't try too. I have no real idea how successful they'll be as I'm not exactly the demographic that they're aimed at. But they've done pretty well in just about every measure except Parliamentary seats.
- andyjohnson0 10y ago
  Not a chance, unfortunately. The membership are still there and they're still angry. My guess is that, having tasted political blood, they'll want more - and move further to the right. Something like France's Front National, or one of the openly fascist eastern European parties. I'm fairly sure that the remaining party leadership won't like this, in which case they will probably be replaced by new people who do.
moomin 10y ago
Arron Banks, the main funding for UKIP, had already lost faith in Farage. Farage had also fallen out with Doug Carswell. Looks like a coup, pure and simple. I wouldn't discount Farage coming back, though.
k-mcgrady 10y ago
Makes sense. He's achieved a goal he's spent his political career working for. And as such a minority party he'll have little say in the actual negotiations so why not retire?
- atmosx 10y ago
  Shouldn't he wait until the actual negotiations come to an end? Farage is the second major pro-Brexit campaigner to quit, don't you find it curious?
  - zakk 10y ago
    > Shouldn't he wait until the actual negotiations come to an end? The negotiations will be done by the government. Mr Farage will have no role in the negotiations. Why waiting for something you have absolutely no role in?
  - chvid 10y ago
    Farage/UKIP would not participate in the negotiating anyways. Boris Johnson surely is just waiting for a chance to come back.
- gadders 10y ago
  He's also probably fed up with needing to have security follow him everywhere and having him and his family attacked in pubs. [1] [1] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/22/farage-calls-anti-ukip-protesters-who-forced-him-out-of-pub-scum http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/22/farage-calls...
  - k-mcgrady 10y ago
    He's considered a bigoted prick by a large majority of the country - I doubt quitting will remove the necessity of security.
  - thomnottom 10y ago
    Being confronted by a conga line of people whom you regularly speak out against is considered being attacked? Does he really believe these vicious conga lines of diversity will stop just because he quit?
wookey 10y ago
Resigns [Again]. I am sure he will be back being a plank once this round of heat lessens.
- cocotino 10y ago
  He tried, but they didn't let him. And taking into account what he's achieved, I can understand why. :-)
jamiethompson 10y ago
Crashes car. Walks away.
ddebernardy 10y ago
Classy... He heavily contributed to creating a mess... admits it was based on lies... and is now jumping ship instead of helping steer it so it weathers the storm...
- masklinn 10y ago
  Then again his goal was never to help steer anything or weather any storm[0], ol' nige was always in it for the destruction, his UKIP work is done, he's moving on to the next think he can fuck up. [0] or he'd have been present at more than more than 1/42 meetings over his three years on the European Parliament Fisheries Committee, and would have voted or officially abstained on policy (as most other UKIP MEP did) instead of not showing up at all.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bungle 10y ago
  On the other hand, would you like to have him helping with steering? Even Tesla's autopilot does a better job.
- iofj 10y ago
  Otoh, staying in UKIP would not exactly let him "help steer" any ship (assuming you mean the UK).
jacquesm 10y ago
As much as I dislike Farage and everything he stands for (1) British politics is better off without him and his toxic divisiveness and (2) his party is so small that he couldn't make any difference anyway. He's done enough damage so please let him go and let's hope he stays gone this time around (he already left once before and then came back to campaign for the 'leave' camp).
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  > his party is so small that he couldn't make any difference anyway > He's done enough damage These seem contradictory.
  - soohyung 10y ago
    His party hasn't made any difference, he as an individual has.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    His party has only 1 single seat. But Farage as a person has been instrumental in creating strife. Much like Wilders in NL (who has far more seats in parliament here), politically he doesn't have much clout but he is very capable of fomenting dissent and division within our society (and the press is complicit in giving him a disproportional amount of airtime to spew his provocative bile).
    - UVB-76 10y ago
      > His party has only 1 single seat. Number of seats in Parliament is a poor measure of influence. UKIP has had a major impact on British politics, particularly at the last General Election. So much so that the EU Referendum was called, and indeed, a majority voted to fulfil the central purpose of UKIP.
- masklinn 10y ago
  > As much as I dislike Farage and everything he stands for (1) British politics is better off without him and his toxic divisiveness That would be nice, but I'm guessing he's coming back in a few years either as a Conservative of some sort or to help with far-right power plays in the Labour heartlands à la US Southern Strategy.
cantagi 10y ago
UKIP is very right wing and no mainstream party will normally want to ally with them. Farage clearly wants to join the Conservative cabinet for post-brexit negotiations. He will probably join Andrea Leadsom's campaign, who has refused to rule out the possibility of giving him a position in the cabinet.
- arethuza 10y ago
  I think he'll get a peerage and be in the cabinet within the year.
  - andyjohnson0 10y ago
    UKIP in its current form is a continuing threat to the tories. They won't want anything to do with him.
    - arethuza 10y ago
      I don't think UKIP will merge with the Conservatives, I suspect Farage will be offered a peerage by the next Conservative leader, particularly if they weren't a strong Brexit supporter.
ProxCoques 10y ago
There is no way Farage will leave politics. This is the man who stood for MP SEVEN TIMES and failed (so he became an MEP instead).
atmosx 10y ago
UPDATE: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/11/nigel-farage-withdraws-resignation-as-ukip-leader http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/11/nigel-farage...
- amouat 10y ago
  From 2015. I assume this was just a joke.
- 4ndr3vv 10y ago
  This was after the General Election in May last year. Not the same story.
- bdz 10y ago
  >Monday 11 May 2015 16.33 BST
- elemenopy 10y ago
  That's from May last year, when he resigned and then un-resigned after failing to win his seat in the last election. Of course, possible a similar thing could happen again.
_98fj 10y ago
Destroying stuff is just more fun than building stuff. That applies to kids in the sandbox like it does to ill-bred grown-up politicians. Dropping a bomb onto a house is more fun than building one. Leaving the EU with a bang was certainly more fun to him than the long negotiations that follow could ever be.
eva1984 10y ago
This is like trolling everyone for no real good reason..Confusing to say the least
tremon 10y ago
This is getting funny, but maybe I just don't get it: to me it looks like all major figureheads of both sides of the Brexit campaign are refusing to lead their country to the next step. PM Cameron I can understand, he never wanted out of the EU so for him to step down was probably unavoidable. But that both Johnson and Farage are refusing to pick up the torch they've been given is inexcusable to me.
- gadders 10y ago
  UKIP only have one MP in the UK Parliament, it would be unlikely they would be part of any Brexit negotiations. Boris decided not to run as Tory Leader as you need a certain number of MPs to vote for you, and the top two candidates are then voted on by the Conservative Party Membership. I believe that when Gove started his own campaign, he took a lot of Boris's support away and he didn't have the necessary numbers of MPs to stand a chance of success.
philjackson 10y ago
I wonder if he'll move to Germany with his German wife.
kyriakos 10y ago
He will continue being an MEP for another 2 years. Sounds like a bad joke.
gonvaled 10y ago
It occurred to me that with so much backstabbing in brexit rangs, one disgruntled key figure could bring the whole house crashing down. What would happen if BoJo would anounce “the whole thing was just a big lie, and I need to clear my conscience“ - irregardless of the merit of the statement, just out of spite. It just seems to me that emotions are running wild post referendum in the leave camp.

36 points by peterkshultz 10y ago

atmosx 10y ago

Doesn't make sense, at all.

satysin 10y ago
Sure it does. Nobody had plan for what "Brexit" actually means for the country. Farage just shouted louder and louder for 25 years until a combination of things swung things his way. Now real, difficult work has to be done he wants out of the spotlight as quickly as possible.
- estefan 10y ago
  I wonder if BoJo and Farage are foreign plants... If the Tories have any sense they'll drag this out for a year or two, get a rubbish set of new proposals, give us a new referendum and people will vote to stay this time.
  - ProxCoques 10y ago
    That's probably as good a bet as anything else right now.
jamiethompson 10y ago
No one ever expected that the public would be daft enough to actually vote to leave the EU. I very much doubt whether success was ever part of the plan. He's fucked the country and his self.
- atmosx 10y ago
  I find that extremely odd. It's like an engineer who doesn't look at that data at hand: Since 2005 every attempt to put a referendum (e.g. France, Netherlands, Greece) on any matter that had to do with the EU, ended up with anti-EU vote win. So if you look closer at the data, then you'll see that anti-EU sentiment is way stronger then pro-EU throughout Europe. I believe that people higher-up the food-chain have access and a say in the social and mass media. This creates a strong reality distorted (like London vs Rest of England).
  - hjrnunes 10y ago
    you must be some kind of scientific racist /sarcasm
DoubleGlazing 10y ago
Farage is smart, very smart and he knows exactly what he is doing. He has spent the last 20-odd years screaming about how bad the EU is saying it is undemocratic, wasteful, an affront to national sovereignty, promotes uncontrolled immigration and so on. Yet none of his or UKIPs arguments really stand up to serious scrutiny. He has been very good at redirecting the anger of marginalised communities away from the real source of their woes and towards the EU. He has made people think that the EU is to blame for their problems, when in fact those problems are the responsibility of the UK government. He has portrayed himself as a man of the people with the pint and ciggie, despite the fact that he is anything but. He has managed to get the support of traditional Labour supporters despite the fact that he is as hard-right as they come. That's quite an achievement. Don't forget that UKIP was founded as a fairly Liberal euroscpetic party. The original leader Alan Sked was forced out by Farages mob for being too intellectual. Farage is a master manipulator and he knows that winning the referendum was only the first stage in a long process that will go on for years. He's taking a back seat now to avoid being a part of the current political maelstrom, but you can be certain he'll reappear when he knows he can take advantage of the situation. I also wouldn't be surprised if he is also pulling a few political string behind the scenes.

sidcool 10y ago

Looks like he understood what a mess he has created. It's more of 'I am getting out before shit hits the fan' type decision.

hellodevnull 10y ago
So many comments in this thread regurgitating the same drivel, which by the way adds no value to the discussion. A man spends decades of his life working on something, and now you're telling me, after he achieves his goal, that he's having an epiphany and no longer believes in it? There's a political bubble here on HN (a lot of hate for Brexit/UKIP), but that's not a reason to be able to make silly comments like this.
- sidcool 10y ago
  I do agree that mine was a quick, to of my mind comment . But it looks suspicious at first glance. He is not all that high and mighty as he's sounding.

cm2187 10y ago

I presume UKIP will dissolve too. The party had the unique goal of getting the UK to leave the EU. Now that they achieved it, their raison d'etre is gone.

lucozade 10y ago
I would be very surprised if that happened. They received 4mm votes in the last general election. 17mm people voted for Brexit. I would fully expect that the UKIP leadership would look at that as a potential 13mm people that they can reach. The traditional left-right politics is creaking in the UK and parties like SNP and UKIP have tapped into that. Even though both started as, effectively, single issue parties, SNP have morphed into a mainstream political party and I see no reason why UKIP wouldn't try too. I have no real idea how successful they'll be as I'm not exactly the demographic that they're aimed at. But they've done pretty well in just about every measure except Parliamentary seats.
andyjohnson0 10y ago
Not a chance, unfortunately. The membership are still there and they're still angry. My guess is that, having tasted political blood, they'll want more - and move further to the right. Something like France's Front National, or one of the openly fascist eastern European parties. I'm fairly sure that the remaining party leadership won't like this, in which case they will probably be replaced by new people who do.

moomin 10y ago

Arron Banks, the main funding for UKIP, had already lost faith in Farage. Farage had also fallen out with Doug Carswell. Looks like a coup, pure and simple. I wouldn't discount Farage coming back, though.

k-mcgrady 10y ago

Makes sense. He's achieved a goal he's spent his political career working for. And as such a minority party he'll have little say in the actual negotiations so why not retire?

atmosx 10y ago
Shouldn't he wait until the actual negotiations come to an end? Farage is the second major pro-Brexit campaigner to quit, don't you find it curious?
- zakk 10y ago
  > Shouldn't he wait until the actual negotiations come to an end? The negotiations will be done by the government. Mr Farage will have no role in the negotiations. Why waiting for something you have absolutely no role in?
- chvid 10y ago
  Farage/UKIP would not participate in the negotiating anyways. Boris Johnson surely is just waiting for a chance to come back.
gadders 10y ago
He's also probably fed up with needing to have security follow him everywhere and having him and his family attacked in pubs. [1] [1] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/22/farage-calls-anti-ukip-protesters-who-forced-him-out-of-pub-scum http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/22/farage-calls...
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  He's considered a bigoted prick by a large majority of the country - I doubt quitting will remove the necessity of security.
- thomnottom 10y ago
  Being confronted by a conga line of people whom you regularly speak out against is considered being attacked? Does he really believe these vicious conga lines of diversity will stop just because he quit?

wookey 10y ago

Resigns [Again]. I am sure he will be back being a plank once this round of heat lessens.

cocotino 10y ago
He tried, but they didn't let him. And taking into account what he's achieved, I can understand why. :-)

jamiethompson 10y ago

Crashes car. Walks away.

ddebernardy 10y ago

Classy... He heavily contributed to creating a mess... admits it was based on lies... and is now jumping ship instead of helping steer it so it weathers the storm...

masklinn 10y ago
Then again his goal was never to help steer anything or weather any storm[0], ol' nige was always in it for the destruction, his UKIP work is done, he's moving on to the next think he can fuck up. [0] or he'd have been present at more than more than 1/42 meetings over his three years on the European Parliament Fisheries Committee, and would have voted or officially abstained on policy (as most other UKIP MEP did) instead of not showing up at all.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bungle 10y ago
On the other hand, would you like to have him helping with steering? Even Tesla's autopilot does a better job.
iofj 10y ago
Otoh, staying in UKIP would not exactly let him "help steer" any ship (assuming you mean the UK).

jacquesm 10y ago

As much as I dislike Farage and everything he stands for (1) British politics is better off without him and his toxic divisiveness and (2) his party is so small that he couldn't make any difference anyway. He's done enough damage so please let him go and let's hope he stays gone this time around (he already left once before and then came back to campaign for the 'leave' camp).

chrisseaton 10y ago
> his party is so small that he couldn't make any difference anyway > He's done enough damage These seem contradictory.
- soohyung 10y ago
  His party hasn't made any difference, he as an individual has.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  His party has only 1 single seat. But Farage as a person has been instrumental in creating strife. Much like Wilders in NL (who has far more seats in parliament here), politically he doesn't have much clout but he is very capable of fomenting dissent and division within our society (and the press is complicit in giving him a disproportional amount of airtime to spew his provocative bile).
  - UVB-76 10y ago
    > His party has only 1 single seat. Number of seats in Parliament is a poor measure of influence. UKIP has had a major impact on British politics, particularly at the last General Election. So much so that the EU Referendum was called, and indeed, a majority voted to fulfil the central purpose of UKIP.
masklinn 10y ago
> As much as I dislike Farage and everything he stands for (1) British politics is better off without him and his toxic divisiveness That would be nice, but I'm guessing he's coming back in a few years either as a Conservative of some sort or to help with far-right power plays in the Labour heartlands à la US Southern Strategy.

cantagi 10y ago

UKIP is very right wing and no mainstream party will normally want to ally with them. Farage clearly wants to join the Conservative cabinet for post-brexit negotiations. He will probably join Andrea Leadsom's campaign, who has refused to rule out the possibility of giving him a position in the cabinet.

arethuza 10y ago
I think he'll get a peerage and be in the cabinet within the year.
- andyjohnson0 10y ago
  UKIP in its current form is a continuing threat to the tories. They won't want anything to do with him.
  - arethuza 10y ago
    I don't think UKIP will merge with the Conservatives, I suspect Farage will be offered a peerage by the next Conservative leader, particularly if they weren't a strong Brexit supporter.

ProxCoques 10y ago

There is no way Farage will leave politics. This is the man who stood for MP SEVEN TIMES and failed (so he became an MEP instead).

atmosx 10y ago

UPDATE: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/11/nigel-farage-withdraws-resignation-as-ukip-leader http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/11/nigel-farage...

amouat 10y ago
From 2015. I assume this was just a joke.
4ndr3vv 10y ago
This was after the General Election in May last year. Not the same story.
bdz 10y ago
>Monday 11 May 2015 16.33 BST
elemenopy 10y ago
That's from May last year, when he resigned and then un-resigned after failing to win his seat in the last election. Of course, possible a similar thing could happen again.

_98fj 10y ago

Destroying stuff is just more fun than building stuff. That applies to kids in the sandbox like it does to ill-bred grown-up politicians. Dropping a bomb onto a house is more fun than building one. Leaving the EU with a bang was certainly more fun to him than the long negotiations that follow could ever be.

eva1984 10y ago

This is like trolling everyone for no real good reason..Confusing to say the least

tremon 10y ago

This is getting funny, but maybe I just don't get it: to me it looks like all major figureheads of both sides of the Brexit campaign are refusing to lead their country to the next step. PM Cameron I can understand, he never wanted out of the EU so for him to step down was probably unavoidable. But that both Johnson and Farage are refusing to pick up the torch they've been given is inexcusable to me.

gadders 10y ago
UKIP only have one MP in the UK Parliament, it would be unlikely they would be part of any Brexit negotiations. Boris decided not to run as Tory Leader as you need a certain number of MPs to vote for you, and the top two candidates are then voted on by the Conservative Party Membership. I believe that when Gove started his own campaign, he took a lot of Boris's support away and he didn't have the necessary numbers of MPs to stand a chance of success.

philjackson 10y ago

I wonder if he'll move to Germany with his German wife.

kyriakos 10y ago

He will continue being an MEP for another 2 years. Sounds like a bad joke.

gonvaled 10y ago

It occurred to me that with so much backstabbing in brexit rangs, one disgruntled key figure could bring the whole house crashing down. What would happen if BoJo would anounce “the whole thing was just a big lie, and I need to clear my conscience“ - irregardless of the merit of the statement, just out of spite. It just seems to me that emotions are running wild post referendum in the leave camp.