Claim 7e6e4823Checked 21 Jul 2026
TrueOn the truth scale
“The people identified as Ukip’s rank and file include farmers, deep-sea fishermen, and small shopkeepers.”
Reasoning & Evidence21 Jul 2026
The claim concerns whether farmers, deep-sea fishermen, and small shopkeepers are among the groups making up UKIP's rank and file (as attributed to Farage by the interviewer). The available evidence provides reasonable support for this characterization. Academic research on UKIP's support base (Ford, Goodwin, and Cutts; Evans and Mellon at Oxford/LSE) confirms that UKIP drew disproportionately from the self-employed and small business owners — a category that includes small shopkeepers — as well as from working-class voters. The self-employed and small employers were identified as one of UKIP's strongest support groups, even more so than the traditional working class.
For fishermen, there is direct reporting that UKIP garnered significant support in fishing communities, particularly in coastal towns like Ramsgate, where fishermen's livelihoods were affected by EU Common Fisheries Policy regulations. Farage's anti-EU stance resonated strongly with these communities.
For farmers, while the academic studies found frame UKIP's support in class terms rather than by specific occupation, UKIP's Eurosceptic and anti-regulation positioning would naturally appeal to farmers affected by EU agricultural policies. However, there is less direct, occupation-specific evidence confirming farmers as a distinct component of UKIP's rank and file in 2011.
The claim uses the inclusive word "include," meaning these groups are part of the rank and file, not that they constitute the entirety. Given the evidence that small business owners (shopkeepers) and fishing communities were demonstrably part of UKIP's support base, and that farmers were a plausible constituency given the party's positioning, the claim is broadly accurate. The interviewer's framing is a reasonable characterization of UKIP's occupational support base, even if the academic literature describes it more in class terms.
Sources: Ford, Goodwin, and Cutts, "Strategic Eurosceptics and Politically Xenophobic: Support for the UK Independence Party at the 2009 European Parliament Elections" (University of Nottingham) https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/documents/pdf/strategiceuroscepticsandpolitexenophobessupportfortheukindependencepartyinthe2009europeanparliamentelections.pdf; Evans and Mellon, "Working class votes and Conservative losses: solving the UKIP puzzle" (LSE British Politics and Policy / Oxford ORA) https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/working-class-votes-and-conservative-losses-solving-the-ukip-puzzle/ and https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4c4d2f06-30e4-40e5-b040-c3706a8646e8/files/rjq085k92n; spiked, "A journey into UKIP country" https://www.spiked-online.com/2015/03/11/a-journey-into-ukip-country/; Byline Times, "Great Expectations: Farage's Phoney Fishing for Support" https://bylinetimes.com/2020/09/18/great-expectations-farages-phoney-fishing-for-support/
From article
You write about how much fun you had, ‘drinking more or less continuously’, and what shedloads of money you were getting. What have you got in common with the kind of people you identify as the rank and file of Ukip: farmers, deep-sea fishermen, small shopkeepers? These are people whose living is often precarious, sometimes very dangerous, never ‘fun’, and they work very hard.
Sources opened