REPORTER: Mark Davis
NIGEL FARAGE, UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY LEADER: OK. Pall Mall, please.
REPORTER: Where are you we off to?
NIGEL FARAGE: Well to the RAC Club, which is... Pall Mall is full of what used to be called ‘Gentlemen's Clubs'...
Nigel Farage is touring the business clubs of London.
NIGEL FARAGE: This is my club here, having the work done; the East India Club... Yeah.
REPORTER: East India Club.
Drumming up cash on the back of his recent political successes for his UK Independence Party - UKIP.
NIGEL FARAGE: I've got billionaires, I mean you know, to them a hundred grand's like you and I going for a pint. But, but, but there's still quite a lot of people actively engaged in business who fear if they are seen to support UKIP somehow the establishment...
REPORTER: Won't approve.
NIGEL FARAGE: Or that there could be recriminations against them.
For years he's been branded as a racist but his strong anti-immigration message has made him this year's rising star of UK politics.
REPORTER: It wasn't quite polite to say you were a supporter... Is it the still the case.
NIGEL FARAGE: I think it's changed. I think the class dimension comes back into this actually. I think in sort of upper middle class dinner parties, if you said you were UKIP you probably wouldn't get invited back. But I think among the mass of the population it's seen to be perfectly reasonable, decent, respectable thing for us to say.
I mean having said that, having said that we've got two Dukes who are now members of UKIP and, and, and it, it needs people with courage and so often what I get, I get it from serving members of Parliament from both the Conservative and labour parties, who say ‘Well Nigel, good one you old son, I mean keep going.' Well thank you very much, what are you going to do to help me? ‘ohh, no, no, no if I was to say anything I might lose my seat or they might de-select me' so it is almost...
I mean we are almost back to Oscar Wilde, you know, that this is the politics that dare not speak its name - which of course makes it even more fun from my point of view.
Farage's support base is not in large urban centres like London. It's large in country and regional areas like here in Ledbury, West Midlands. Jim Carver is a third generation umbrella maker and part of the UKIP phenomena which is sweeping Britain.
JIM CARVER: Chook, chook, chooks! I've been doing umbrellas since 1991 full time. I mean always as a youngster growing up, sort watching my father and sort of helping dad as a youngster, but full time since 1991. I do bespoke stuff, I do a few antique repairs when time permits and I make bookmakers umbrellas for the on-course bookmakers. So it's a bit of a niche market.
Carver's niche market has taken a hit from cheap imports in recent years. But Jim has just launched a new career - he's just been elected as one of Britain's representatives to the European Parliament. On one of UKIP's key platforms - to pull Britain out of the EU.
JIM CARVER: I've made up my mind about how I feel about Britain's future relationship with the European Union. Very straightforward, I believe we're better off out. And that is what sets us apart from the other established political parties. Nigel often says you can't get a cigarette paper between the three main parties. Well, that doesn't apply to us because we're very clear.
For the past 12 months, UKIP, to the growing consternation of both Labor and the Conservatives, has been picking off a range of small elections across the country.
MAN: Fundamentally, I'm pro-European.
JIM CARVER: OK. At least you have an opinion.
Like this council election in Malvern Hills, which Jim is door-knocking for.
JIM CARVER: If we want to leave the European Court of Human Rights or convention on human rights... We have to withdraw from the European Union
The people in this countryside electorate seem highly receptive to a candidate talking about the esoterica of European politics.
MAN: How can we compete with other countries in Europe if they're controlling our power base, our water base.
JIM CARVER: The British electorate have always been receptive to our message about Britain's relationship with the European Union and where it's heading.
REPORTER: What's your shorthand message? Sometimes you get 20 seconds with - when you're door-knocking.
JIM CARVER: OK.
REPORTER: What's the trigger?
JIM CARVER: The shorthand message is they know clearly what we stand for and the issue of immigration, it's a huge issue. How do you feel about UKIP?
European trade intricacies may be lost on some voters in a local council election but one UKIP issue always shines through.
WOMAN: I'm not being xenophobic or anything like that, is immigration - We're just a little tiny country...
Opposition to the large number of migrants that have arrived in Britain, through its membership of the EU, has led UKIP to victory in local elections like this...
JIM CARVER: If I was a racist, I wouldn't be in a party like UKIP, I would join an extreme party..
And resoundingly so for the British seats in the EU parliament earlier this year.
NIGEL FARAGE: 526,000 people settled in this country last year.
Beating both Labors and the Conservatives, the first party in over a century to do that in a UK-wide election.
WOMAN: Say it how it is.
NIGEL FARAGE: I will, don't worry.
A considerable personal triumph for Nigel Farage.
NIGEL FARAGE: I tell you, I've been up half the night. This is absolutely marvellous.
For more than a decade, Farage has been seen as little more than a fringe opponent of Britain's membership of the EU. Now he's being mooted as the third force in Britain's politics priming himself for next year's general election.
NIGEL FARAGE: Part of my life is that we actually have to fund this party. We get no State money or support at all. So we have to pay for it all.
REPORTER: Well, the irony at the moment though is the people who are paying for it is the EU?
NIGEL FARAGE: Well, the EU have certainly been very helpful.
REPORTER: It must be a major boost though. There are a lot of salaries you're able to pull out of that now.
NIGEL FARAGE: We, are yes...but..
REPORTER: Which is ironic if nothing else.
NIGEL FARAGE: Oh, deliciously ironic yeah. Almost every single day I'm in London - I'm out having lunch or dinner and trying to raise cash.
As Farage rattles his tins amongst the billionaires just around the corner, others are begging for their lunch, Romanian migrants living rough on London's finest Boulevard in such numbers that the council employs staff to harass and move them on.
COUNCIL EMPLOYEE: Can I get your bulletins, please, for our records. I know you, don't I, from before. That's me - yes.
Since Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, their citizens have had full rights of movement across Europe and Britain.
COUNCIL EMPLOYEE: Why did you come here? Why here?
And their presence in such large numbers has propelled UKIP's anti-EU message onto the centre stage.
NIGEL FARAGE: We are not saying the Rumanians are all beastly people or anything like that. What we are saying is that as a result of uncontrolled, open door immigration 4 million people now have settled in Britain over the last 14 years.
WOMAN (Translation): Here they are cold-hearted. All racist! Or whatever else you call them...
MAN (Translation): We Romanians are looked down upon.
NIGEL FARAGE: You know, if you go and visit Romania, you go and visit Bulgaria, you'd be shocked. You would be deeply, deeply shocked. To see the living conditions of millions of people who come from the Roma community. They were actually better off under communism. The wall comes down, big capital, big business, the organised criminal gangs take over much of the economy of those countries and these people are now completely excluded. I mean, what would you do? If you're an 18-year-old living in Bucharest...
REPORTER: I'd go to London.
NIGEL FARAGE: Exactly! Exactly!
Strasbourg, northern France, it's the first week of sitting at the European Parliament for its new members. Farage knows these corridors of power well.
NIGEL FARAGE: Let's go do it.
REPORTER: Rather nice offices you've got.
NIGEL FARAGE: Oh, it's all paid for by the taxpayer. Money is no object.
He's been a member here since 1999.
NIGEL FARAGE: We've got these offices here; they're duplicated in Brussels and the administration centres all in Luxembourg - a parliament with three homes. Don't think of this as a Parliament, think of it as a temple, and the people that come here from left and right have over the decades been true believers, true believers in the creation of a European dream.
So it's almost heresy for someone like me to come here and, irony of ironies, take a front seat position in the Parliament, I mean its absolutely hilarious.
It's the first party meeting for the new UKIP members before Parliament sits.
NIGEL FARAGE: It's a big,big change from the last parliament where voting meetings took place in my office because we could quite easily cram them all in there.
24 members from regions across the breadth of Britain and almost all of them are political novices.
NIGEL FARAGE: So it's Ray's first meeting in the chair as Deputy Whip.
Since he was first elected to the EU in '99, Farage has been Britain's principal Eurosceptic. His view that the institution was a threat to British independence was seen as an eccentric one. But his message became relevant to many when Eurozone migration began to impact over the past decade.
NIGEL FARAGE: We are now signed up to a system where 480 million people have the right to come and live and work and settle in Britain. That's nearly half a billion people who can just come in... We have no control over quantity; we have no control over quality...We can't even deport criminals...
WOMAN: So we vote for that?
Like others here today, the umbrella man, Jim Carver, is still learning the ropes on how the Parliament operates. A procedural vote was held in the morning and he hit the wrong button to vote.
JIM CARVER: And I don't know if colleagues are aware that... I made a mistake when I voted this morning. If you do vote and make a mistake you can go through the European Parliament website and change your vote to ensure that you... You have 24 hours.
NIGEL FARAGE: Can you just talk us through that Jim.
POLITICIAN: Worse than that, he tried to get me to do it. I said no!
JIM CARVER: That's right. I've gone native.
POLITICIAN 2: Is that all? Wonderful, thank you very much.
REPORTER: So this is really the first real business?
NIGEL FARAGE: Yes it is. We've had our little voting meeting and it was all rather entertaining and a lot of new boys who weren't really quite sure what they were doing and where they were going. But that's all right, we can live with that.
REPORTER: That's part of the team is it?
NIGEL FARAGE: It's just like going to school. You know you go up to big school when you're eleven and you feel like completely out of your depth... but I must go and earn me money.
After a not so discrete back turn to the European anthem, it's down to business. The election of parliamentary President, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Farage is off.
NIGEL FARAGE: Well, thank you, and good morning everybody. If this is European democracy in action as we've heard this morning I suggest we have a rethink. We're all going to be asked to vote and we've got one candidate to vote for! It's like good old Soviet times, isn't it?! Surely democracy means you get more of a choice than one.
They're going to know we're here, don't you worry about that. We're going to be vocal, we're going to be vociferous and also, I couldn't do something unless it was fun.
So what of our nominee? Well on the plus side Mr Juncker you are a sociable cove with a very much better sense of humour than most people I've met in Brussels. But we are being asked to vote for the ultimate Brussels insider, somebody who has always operated with dark back-room deals and stitch ups, and I have to say that our group overwhelmingly will vote no, we don't want business as usual because the vast majority of European people don't want a European state and don't want that anthem.
The EU Parliament is now an unusual mix, providing home and sucker to many who want to disband it. It's been a principal platform for decades for Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen and his French National Front. As it is now for his daughter Marine le Pen who like UKIP enjoyed the top billing in her nation's recent EU vote.
MARINE LE PEN: Yes, whether you like it or not dear fellow countrymen they chose to send a very clear message. No to massive immigration, no to the dilution of our national identity, and yes to our nations...
CATHERINE BEARDER: It's an easy scapegoat in financially difficult times.
Catherine Bearder, UK representative of the Liberal Democrats, believes that parties like the National Front and UKIP will fade away as the European economy improves.
CATHERINE BEARDER: It's very easy to say times are difficult here, it's their fault.
REPORTER: Right.
CATHERINE BEARDER: And point the finger at migrants and it's the fault of the European Union, it's the fault of them over there, they are trying to get you.
REPORTER: Do you think people have an objection to the EU in itself, or is it an objection to EU migrants? Which trigger is really working for you?
CATHERINE BEARDER: Up till now, the reason for UKIP is to take the UK out of the European Union There is a political argument you can have about that. This campaign, he has really moved into the Romanians. They're criminals, they're coming here to take your jobs. It's an old and very easy political trick.
But Conservative Party Member David Campbell Bannerman, formerly an ally of Farage, sees no sign of the opposition to EU migration easing. He's been part of the push within the Conservative Party to embrace it.
DAVID CAMPBELL BANNERMAN, CONSERVATIVE PARTY: Immigration is now the number one issue in Britain. An independent poll has shown, the Morey Issues Index, is even bigger than the economy at the moment for the first time since 2008. So it is a huge issue and certainly the politics of it, favour UKIP. But I think the issue of UKIP is whether they are a real political party or just a protest party.
I think they've made a massive impact, but actually other parties are now moving, particularly the Conservative Party, we're offering a referendum, the chance for the British people to vote to leave the EU which is the central platform...
REPORTER: It seems that way, is that a reaction to UKIP's success?
But for now the anti migration votes are all there for Farages taking. In London, one of Farage's lunches has ended badly when he was asked to stop smoking.
NIGEL FARAGE: Puritanical bunch of wankers. It's amazing, we had lunch, we sat outside on the terrace, they wouldn't let me smoke. I said what's the matter isn't the ceiling high enough? - It's absolutely unbelievable. We are being controlled by puritans, they want us to live forever so we can preserve ourselves for those last few bonus years. We're not saying smoking's good, we're not doing that. It's a symbol of getting the state off our backs. Big government, the nanny state; I can't stand it.
REPORTER: And that's resonating a bit, not smoking in itself, but that sort of sentiment is...
NIGEL FARAGE: I think that's right I think speed cameras and... do you know we've just had a three week, sort of, not heat wave but really quite good weather for three weeks, but there are government warnings, wear a hat, put, I don't know, factor 75 all over your body, drink water. I mean you'd think we've never had a summer before in this country. Why don't they all just butt out. That's what I think about it. But we all feel a bit like that yeah.
Farage has tapped into a range of ideas that have been broadly off limits in political debate, utterly confounding the established parties and within the ruling Conservative party cracks are starting to appear.
DOUGLAS CARSWELL, CONSERVATIVE MP: I'm today leaving the Conservative Party and joining UKIP.
Just over a fortnight ago, the Conservative MP for Clacton, Douglas Carswell defected from the Tories and joined UKIP.
NIGEL FARAGE: The bravest, most honourable and noblest thing I've seen in British politics in my lifetime.
But there were more storms to come... on the weekend, a second Tory MP jumped ship.
TORY MP: Today, I am leaving the Conservative Party.
The Tories are hurting this week, but with a general election due early next year, Farage has his eye firmly on ripping through the middle of both established parties.
NIGEL FARAGE: The politics in this country today is purely run by a bunch of rich college kids.
His conversation is often scattered with attacks on the rich and the privileged of Britain - a clear call to Labour voters.
REPORTER: You're seen as a right wing party, can you go against the interests of capital which is what you've just suggested really?
NIGEL FARAGE: This thought that we're right wing, in any conventional sense, just couldn't be further from the truth. I think the extent to which the land owning, capital owning classes of this country have benefitted themselves over the course of the last few years...5 or 6 % that have everything, and the rest that have nothing. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer...
The sudden rise of UKIP is creating a mild panic amongst both Labour and the Conservatives. Farage seems determined to continue scooping votes from left, right and centre, possibly a difficult balancing act to maintain all the way to the May election next year.
NIGEL FARAGE: The goal is clear, we want to hold the balance of power in the next parliament. And people say to me ‘Oh Nigel that is just outrageously ambitious.' Well do you know what? Yes why not. When I said to people three years ago we could win the European elections, they all laughed at me. Well...
Farage doesn't need to deliver his own punch line... No one is laughing now...
MARK DAVIS: Quite a character - The panache of Clive Palmer and perhaps a dash of Pauline Hanson there. That was my week with the colourful Nigel Farage: I'm sure we'll be hearing more from him in the coming year.
Reporter/Camera
MARK DAVIS
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Researcher
ASHLEY HAMER
Graphics
MICHAEL BROWN
Editor
MICAH MCGOWN
Thanks to European Parliament Audio/Visual Unit
30th September 2014