A British Right-Wing Firebrand Gets a Reality Check in America
Nigel Farage, leader of the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), listens to a speech during his political party's Spring conference at the Winter Gardens in Margate, U.K., on Friday, Feb. 27, 201
Photographer: Jason Alden/BloombergOXON HILL, Md.—Nigel Farage is trying to escape an interview, and succeeding. He’s zipping past the “radio row” of the Conservative Political Action Conference, saved by the combination of sensory overload and modest celebrity. The leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party is YouTube-famous here, at best. He is fine with that.
At home, Farage is a candidate for parliament and the face of a fast-growing splinter party, currently polling in third place. Prime Minister David Cameron, a member of the governing Conservatives, has derided UKIP as a mob of “loonies, fruitcakes, and closet racists.” Farage, grinning broadly and never apologizing, has been attacked for wanting to deny some health care to immigrants and for putting up candidates who do things like decrying aid to “Bongo-Bongo land.” Here, surrounded by reporters and American conservatives, he is at unusually high risk for an international incident.