NIGEL Farage has revealed how he receives abuse and death threats every day.
In an exclusive interview with GB News, Mr Farage said there’s been times he’s had to face down a baying mob of hundreds of people.
The former UKIP leader said the most recent happened on a plane just last week, but vowed not to let those threatening him win.
Opening up on the abuse he suffers, Mr Farage said: “Last Monday…I was on a plane and this young guy there, they’re sort of student types – he looked very scrappy, so he must have been.
“I’d been really getting abused on the plane, really getting abused. I just said ‘look, it looks like you’ve had your say, sit down, shut up, or I’ll make sure the transport police delay your journey home’.
“That was one example. The week before I was coming into the GB News studios. There was a young couple – oh, they wanted to kill me, and smash my head in, and that’s still there every day.
“It’s still there every day from that particular group. I mean, to some extent, it’s not their fault. They’ve been brainwashed at university. They have not been taught critical thinking.”
Mr Farage added: “They’ve not been taught…a lack of critical thinking means rather than respecting the fact that somebody else has a different point of view, you believe that your view is virtuous and the other view is evil. So in a sense that indoctrination of our kids is breeding much of this behaviour.”
Asked if he has ever been frightened by abusers and he said: “If it’s a mob of several hundred people, you’re in a car trying to get through and they’re all banging on the roof – I mean, fearful?
“I’m never going to admit to being scared but thoughtful because I wouldn’t give them the pleasure of admitting it even if it was true.”
On his decision to back Ms Truss, Farage said he opted for her because she is the “least worst candidate”.
He said: “Oh, if I backed net zero and open borders, who would I back?
“I wouldn’t be a Conservative member. They’ve given up, they’re not Conservative!
“Truss is the least worst. And I think the fact that she’s prepared to say things that are a bit out there and a bit risky – if they’re going to get the country out of the mess we’re in, it is going to need some unconventional thinking.
“So she’s the least worst candidate.”
Asked about how he came into politics, he said: “It does seem bonkers, doesn’t it? Because at the time I had a very good job. I just set my own company up, started to make some real money, played good golf, and went to the pub on Sundays.
“And you know, life was going very, very well. And suddenly, this became my mission. It was really the Exchange Rate Mechanism.
“It was pegging Sterling effectively against the Deutschmark, seeing record house repossessions, record business bankruptcies.
“When I talked to people, both Labour and Conservative politicians at the time, I met them for lunch, to find out more and meet quite a few who agreed with me.
“And I said, ‘well, why didn’t you say something? Well it’s all too difficult. And I thought, well, what a cowardly lot we’ve got.
He added: “I also realised that in my little village in Kent, people felt very differently to what I’d read in The Times newspaper or see on the BBC, and I could see there was a massive gap between the two.
“What really sealed it for me was a chap said to me, a clever chap said to me, ‘no free people in the history of mankind have ever willingly given up the right to govern themselves’, and that sealed the deal for me. Someone’s got to do this.
“So we had a by-election that was caused because the Conservative Member of Parliament for Eastleigh died in somewhat strange circumstances.
“There was a by-election, UKIP was founded six weeks before I put my hand up and said ‘I am that soldier’. So I stood in the by-election, having never stood for anything before.
“I got 1,000 votes, not very many. I just enjoyed it. I loved it and so I kept on going and even though as the years went by, it was having a very detrimental effect on my life, be it business life, family life, financial life. It just became my mission.
“And I would say in the end, why do I keep going for all those years? Sheer bloody mindedness.”
Asked what he would have done if Remain had won the Brexit referendum, Mr Farage said: “I think if it hadn’t been that, there’d have been no debate about a second referendum, none of it, I would have been absolutely dead and buried.
“I would have faced a very big choice at that moment, what to do, either walk away, say you did your best, you’ve got a referendum it would never have happened without you, or to politically establish the UKIP as the independence party to fight the next election and probably to get millions more votes than we even got in 2015.
“I don’t know what I would have done. I honestly don’t know what I would have done, but it would have been very difficult.
“It would have been very difficult. You wouldn’t have had people in the House of Commons calling for a second referendum. It would have been done.
“So, I think the reality is I would have walked away.”
Farage has also revealed the amusing way he finds success during appearances on BBC’s Question Time – arriving late and asking for a drink in the show’s Green Room.
He said: “In the green room, there’s again, there is gamesmanship going on, there is a sense of who has got the upper hand, who is frightened. And I learned really early on with Question Time never to get there early. Be the last to arrive. Then make lots of noise. When they offer you a drink, rather than a cup of tea, you know, ask for a proper drink, say it loudly. Look at the rest of the panel.
“You’re saying to them I do what I want, I don’t care. I couldn’t care less. I’m going to enjoy this and I think it makes the other guys seem so relaxed – the fact that I’m having a drink. The fact that I’m chatting to all the staff and enjoying myself. I think it puts the fear of God into the others. It worked!”
