Who is popular today?

Michael Crick’s gripping and vivid study of Mr Brexit is full of revelatory stories, but pulls its punches at the endAs usual, he was acting the stunt. Early in the morning on the day of the 2010 election, Nigel Farage turned up at an airfield in Northamptonshire, near to the constituency he was contesting. He was wearing his typical pin-striped suit and a rosette in the plum-and-custard colours of his party. He boarded a two-seater plane, the idea being that it would trail a banner bearing the slogan “VOTE FOR YOUR COUNTRY – VOTE UKIP”. Farage wanted to fly in the passenger seat, even though no one would be able to see him from the ground and the TV companies never broadcast campaign stunts on polling day.You can’t just stick a big banner on the back of a small aircraft. The plane had to take off, gain some height and then make a deep dive in order to use a grappling hook to grab the banner from between two poles. The pilot finally managed to attach the banner at the fifth attempt only for it to become entwined in the tail and rudder. The aircraft was soon plunging towards the earth at 80mph. “Oh fuck!” cried Farage. He closed his eyes just before impact, convinced he was about to die. The plane smashed into a field, nose first and inverted. When Farage opened his eyes, he was upside down, his face was almost touching the ground and his blood was dripping on to the grass. Another few inches and he would have been dead. Continue reading...