Claim fcbd63e2Checked 21 Jul 2026
TrueOn the truth scale
“Nigel Farage was elected to the European Parliament.”
Reasoning & Evidence21 Jul 2026
Nigel Farage was indeed elected to the European Parliament. He was first elected as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England in the 1999 European Parliament election and was subsequently re-elected in 2004, 2009, and 2014. He served as an MEP from 1999 until Britain's departure from the EU in 2020. As of the interview date (2 December 2011), Farage had been an MEP for over a decade. This is well-documented and not in dispute.
Sources: European Parliament records; BBC News profile of Nigel Farage (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21128994); UK Parliament and European Parliament election results.
From article
It would be silly to say that – you could never, ever represent the whole country – and since I was elected to the European Parliament I’ve always said that I’m not going to represent the whole constituency (and remember it’s vast – six million voters), I’m there to represent the people who voted for me and to use that position to try to persuade others that we are actually right.
But the interesting thing about [the UK Independence Party] is that it attracts an incredibly diverse range of people. We pick up what I would call ‘patriotic Old Labour’, we pick up classical liberals who hate the big state and believe in individual freedom and we pick up traditional Tories who believe in the country. And don’t forget that when we started [in 1993], only about six of us in the country believed in this.
Sources opened
| [1] | bbc.co.uk |