“Cult hero” Farage is going global

“Love him or hate him, Nigel Farage is the most successful British politician of his generation,” says Adam Boulton – and he’s not done yet. Although his separation from UKIP is set be formalised when the party’s new leader is announced this Monday, he remains a potent force in his own right. Many in his party and in the Tory ranks would love him to be sequestered in the House of Lords, where he could be “smothered by ermine”, but Farage is not about to fall into that “trap”. He wants to remain at large to wield his influence, fully aware that he is – as Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump’s newly appointed chief strategist puts it – “kind of a cult hero in this global populist movement”. Farage enjoys a high profile, both here and, increasingly, in the US; he has the support of Aaron Banks, the British millionaire who until recently funded UKIP; and, for all his post-referendum talk of wanting his life back, he’s still, at 52, relatively young for a politician, and still driven by a healthy ego. The future of UKIP under its likely new leader, the “authoritarian” Paul Nuttall, is uncertain. But whatever the party’s fate may be, “Farage is going global”.