ANDREW PIERCE: Wearing hand-made Union Flag shoes, Nigel Farage was a star turn at a garden party in the grounds of Hampton Court Palace - giving no hint that he would resign the very next day. Immediately there was intense speculation about why he was going. Was he ill? There were certainly rumours last year that he may have been ill, and he is prone to heavy drinking. Was his marriage in crisis? He has admitted to at least one adulterous liaison in the past. Yet it seems the answer is more prosaic. He’s had enough of frontline politics and wants a rest. (Pictured clockwise: Farage with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, in 1999 at the European Parliament, and Farage in the wreckage of a plane crash in 2010 after the Ukip banner it was towing became entangled in the tail.) ...read
Deeply flawed, much mocked but he changed Britain's history: ANDREW PIERCE on how the rise of Ukip under Nigel Farage led David Cameron to call the referendum