“When Farage joined the City, its old-fashioned gentlemen’s-club culture was nearing its end.”

The claim that the City of London's old-fashioned gentlemen's-club culture was "nearing its end" when Nigel Farage entered the City in 1982 as a commodities trader at Drexel Burnham Lambert is well-supported by multiple sources. The pre-Big Bang City is widely described as a "cosy, old-fashioned gentlemen's club" (The Times), a "male-dominated club, where family or public school connections helped people into jobs" (Reuters), and where "regulation in the City and the financial markets pre-Big Bang was a gentlemen's club" (BBC). The Big Bang reforms of October 1986 — which dismantled fixed commissions, the single-capacity system of jobbers and brokers, and rules preventing foreign ownership of broking firms — marked the definitive end of this era. The roots of Big Bang trace back to the 1970s, when the Office of Fair Trading began challenging the Stock Exchange's restrictive, "clubby" rules. By 1982, when Farage entered the City, these pressures were already building, and the reforms were agreed in principle in 1983 before taking effect in 1986. So the gentlemen's-club culture was indeed in its "dying days" at the time Farage describes. Farage's characterization of this culture as "magnificent, socially wonderful but going nowhere" with "a whiff of P.G. Wodehouse" is also consistent with historical accounts describing the pre-Big Bang City as paternalistic, collegiate, and somewhat stagnant — London was described as having "very much gone into a siding" as a financial center during this period. Sources: - The Times, "The day that spelt doom for the long City lunch" (https://www.thetimes.com/business/companies-markets/article/the-day-that-spelt-doom-for-the-long-city-lunch-wgksxtb7n33) - Reuters, "City of London fetes 20 yrs of post-Big Bang boom" (https://www.reuters.com/article/business/city-of-london-fetes-20-yrs-of-post-big-bang-boom-idUSL23830135/) - BBC News, "Viewpoints: How did Margaret Thatcher change Britain?" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22076774) - Wikipedia, "Nigel Farage" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Farage)