Farage: No Wonder Tory Voters Feel Closer To Me. Look At The Stupidity Of Muffin's Priorities: Gay Marriage, Foreign Aid And Wind Farms.

By Simon Walters

For a man who regards Brussels as the biggest threat to Britain’s freedom since the Second World War, the choice of beer for Nigel Farage was obvious when we met at the Westminster Arms on Friday: Spitfire.

It is brewed by Shepherd Neame in Kent to celebrate the Battle of Britain. Farage, a man of Kent, gulped down the first pint in 15 minutes, ordered a ‘reload,’ polishing off his second in another ten; and the moment we stepped outside, he lit up a fag.

Yet this perky political warrior does not carry an ounce of fat and has the blemish-free complexion of a man half his 49 years.

He has spent most of the day being photographed toasting UKIP’s stunning advance in Thursday’s local elections in another hostelry. Where does he put it all?

‘I’ve always had hollow legs,’ he booms, taking another large swig of Spitfire. He denies he is a heavy drinker but freely admits he was in his days in the City. ‘I drank ridiculous amounts, spirits, champagne, oh everything. I recall once when one of my lunch mates said it’s 4pm we have to get back to work, I said “Come on, just one more bottle!” ’ 

Cue raucous laughter. ‘Honestly, I’m a moderate social drinker,’ he insists with a straight face, before grinning: ‘But a regular one!’

You could imagine him propping up the bar of the Winchester Club with Arthur Daley.

 Farage is a contradiction, a lovable spiv who appears to be the only political leader with a clear vision.

Coming back inside the pub, he breezily dismisses the ‘greasy pole of politics’ and declares: ‘Good grief, I don’t want to be in the  Cabinet, I want to change the future of this great country. 

Ken Clarke branded the party 'clowns' potentially driving voters to UKIP

‘I’m going to do it and then I’ll go and do something else.’

While wiping ale off his lips, Farage taunts fellow beer-lover Ken Clarke for helping UKIP humiliate the entire political class. He says Clarke’s eve-of-poll TV appearance, when he called UKIP ‘clowns’, was as ill-judged as the ragged polo-neck the Cabinet Minister was wearing.

‘What a fool. He looked as though he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards after a heavy night,’ scoffs Farage, as neat as a tailor’s dummy in his trademark pinstripe. ‘It provoked people to say, “Sod it, I’m going to vote UKIP.”’

Farage comments caustically: ‘I’m going to inaugurate the annual Kenneth Clarke prize for contributions to euroscepticism – he must be a Brussels double agent! The abuse didn’t soften our vote, it hardened it. It typifies the stupidity of Cameron and Co.’

Farage intends to twist the knife further by adopting Stephen Sondheim’s song, Send In The Clowns, as UKIP’s conference anthem. He means it – and shows off by singing the opening lines.

In fact Clarke was partly right. It’s just that Farage has turned clowning into a political art form. He is a cross between real-life professional clown, Beppe Grillo, who took the recent Italian elections by storm on a similar rabble-rousing platform, and a Thatcher.

But the Thatcher he reminds me of is not Margaret, but Denis.  A politically incorrect, saloon-bar sage who somehow manages to make the Right-wing policies that earned the Tories the crippling ‘Nasty Party’ tag seem, well, naughty but nice.

Farage said that he would join the Conservative Party but only if Prime Minister David Cameron were to quit

‘Denis Thatcher? I’ll settle for that, he was a proper chap,’ says Farage. At which point an aide runs into the bar with an election update: ‘We’ve just hit 100 seats.’

‘Ton up! Cheers! My round .  .  . ’

It’s not yet clear whether he will have similar success when it really matters, in the 2015 General Election. Or whether UKIP’s support will melt like spring snow, as did similar mid-term avalanches for the Lib Dems when they, too, were the harmless protest party.

Farage insists not. 

‘These elections have exposed the great Tory myth, “Vote UKIP, get Miliband.” In many areas, people who voted UKIP, got UKIP. That’s the real kick in the balls for Cameron.’

Other political leaders live in a goldfish bowl, sealed off by flunkies who screen every call. Not Farage. Punters in the pub approach him, jab him in the chest and say, ‘Bloody well done Nige,’ as Farage’s raffish spin doctor, who looks more like a gamekeeper with his scarred cheek and tweed jacket, looks on, unconcerned.

Michale Gove has praised Nigel Farage and the UKIP leader is keen to return the compliment 

Similarly, Farage breaks off mid-sentence during a fierce attack on Cameron to answer his mobile with a jaunty: ‘You still on for lunch tomorrow, Tom? Splendid.’

Who is Tom? ‘My son,’ he replies, puzzled by my inquiry.

‘Sorry, where were we?’ he says. ‘Rewriting Britain’s political landscape,’ I reply. ‘Oh yes,’ he continues, picking up his thread – and his glass. ‘UKIP is not going away.’

Does he consider himself more of a real Tory than Cameron? ‘Good Lord yes,’ he chunters. 

‘He’s not a Tory, he’s a socialist. Tory voters feel much closer to me than their own leader. His priorities are gay marriage, foreign aid and wind farms. They’re not mine.’

The Westminster Arms is barely 100 yards from Parliament, which Farage now has in his crosshairs. He is gagging to stand in a by-election in Portsmouth South, plum UKIP territory, where Lib Dem MP Mike Hancock, beset by ill health and claims of sexual misconduct (which he strongly denies) is tipped to stand down.

Farage will only do so after fulfilling his vow to lead UKIP into next year’s Euro elections so is hoping Hancock stays on a bit longer, or, as Farage puts it with tasteless glee: ‘Hang on Mike, stop groping for the moment!’

But Farage has a much grander dream and is ready to offer the Conservatives the tantalising prospect of wiping out the threat UKIP poses. He and other UKIP candidates would stand on a combined Tory/UKIP ticket, wearing the rosettes of both parties.

You might even call it a Coalition.

But it comes with a big price tag: Cameron’s head. Farage wants him replaced by a Tory who, unlike Cameron, does not hate him. Such as Michael Gove or Boris Johnson.

Gove’s flowery flattery of Farage made its mark. ‘Gove is very canny,’ glowed Farage, who clearly saw it as an overture from the Education Secretary and was keen to return the compliment. ‘He is so much smarter than  Cameron – as is Boris.’

Cameron has ruled out any electoral pact with UKIP. But Farage is convinced it would be a different matter under Gove or Johnson. Both have made more convincing eurosceptic noises than cautious Cameron. And neither has been rash enough to dismiss Farage’s followers, as Cameron famously did, as ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’. Farage will never forgive him for that.

Could the Tories and UKIP really run joint candidates? ‘Oh yes. I have sat round the table with  Conservative Party officials who have suggested it to me.’

Farage's manifesto is a long way away from Clegg's (pictured) 'somersaulting' and Miliband's waffle

When Cameron ditched the Tory Party’s Right-wing policies, he calculated his traditional supporters could not ditch him as they had nowhere to go. The snarling pitbull face of parties such as the BNP had always been too repulsive.

Put with a well groomed, performing Pekingese like Farage, Cameron’s strategy is in tatters.

 To remove any doubts, Farage yaps he is the only UK political leader to have banned BNP members from joining his party.

Now Farage aims to use his mandate to demand he is included in televised debates between the party leaders, a prospect that will fill the other three with dread.

Given the enormous impact Nick Clegg made when he ran rings round Cameron and Gordon Brown in the 2010 debates, imagine the havoc Naughty Nigel could wreak.

‘Why not use next year’s Euro elections as a dummy run?’ he says mischievously. ‘Would I be scared of debating with this lot? Nah.’

Farage’s manifesto appears to consist of standing with a pint in hand, cracking jokes interspersed with saying ‘I hate Brussels’. Pretty crude for a manifesto, but a breath of fresh air compared to the focus group fudge of Cameron, clueless Clegg’s somersaults and Miliband’s nasal waffle on welfare.

Farage claims ‘one or two very senior Tories’ had congratulated him on the election results, though he won’t name them. He denies one was Norman Tebbit, who angered Cameron by calling on voters to back UKIP where a non-Tory had the best chance of beating Labour.

‘How the Tories haven’t expelled him for that is amazing,’ he says, scarcely able to believe his luck. ‘What he said was very useful.’

Farage may disagree, but there  is no doubt there are some ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’ among UKIP’s ranks, even if none are guilty on all three counts.

He says he regrets his boozy chauvinistic japes that have added to UKIP’s image as being ‘on its worst days like a rugby club on tour’. I suspect that is precisely why some men warm to Farage. He denies it is a turn-off to women.

He says the secret of his appeal is: ‘Be what you are, don’t pretend and don’t take yourself too seriously, because the others are all terribly po-faced.’

Nobody has ever called Nigel Farage that.