The accident that almost cost Nigel Farage his life

Nigel Farage has announced that he will stand as a Reform MP in the upcoming general election, the latest drama in his long political career.

The announcement comes after Farage, who also succeeds Richard Tice as chairman of Reform UK, fuelled speculation on Monday morning by writing on social media: “I will be making an emergency announcement on the general election at 4pm today.”

The former leader of UKIP and the Brexit Party, who came third in the final series of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity last year, has experienced plenty of drama in real life, including a close call with death when his light plane crashed during the 2010 election campaign.

On election day in 2010, a small plane carrying Farage crashed after a UKIP advertising banner became caught in the aircraft’s tail fin.

Farage has now commented on the crash when asked by his fellow jungle residents, telling them he was “an idiot” for raising a pro-Brexit banner.

Of his injuries, he said: “I don’t remember being unconscious, but I remember the explosion, the plane flipping over, being stuck in there, everything broken… every rib front and back, a split sternum, a ruptured lung… it was bad.”

Farage said he had checked himself out of hospital because he was “bored”, adding: “When something bad happens to you in life, you have to make a decision. Was I unlucky or was I lucky?”

He had previously said that the experience had made him stronger: “To be honest, I am even more myself now. Even more fatalistic. Even more convinced that this is not a dress rehearsal. Even more determined than before. And I am determined.”

Nor was it the first personal drama that Farage had experienced.

In his early 20s, he was hit by a car after a night out in a pub in Orpington, Kent, suffering serious injuries and later being diagnosed with testicular cancer.

Reports of the crash say Farage – in his trademark pinstripe suit – had chartered the plane that was flying the banner.

But the banner affected the plane, triggering a mayday call as it plummeted toward the ground at 80 miles per hour.

Farage suffered broken vertebrae and ribs as well as a broken sternum and had to undergo spinal surgery; the pilot of the plane was also seriously injured.

Speaking on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories in 2019, Farage admitted: “It’s not a great memory” and described how he went through periods of “denial”, followed by “fear” and finally a “strange resignation” that he might die.

“No one will ever know that I survived”

“I had a vision of what it would be like,” he said. “I imagined something like a blow to the head and blackness, and that was it – it was almost a premonition of what it could be.”

He said that after the crash, as he lay in the wreckage, he thought, “We’re covered in fuel… this damn thing is going to burn and no one will ever know I survived the crash.”

Farage added that while he considered texting his family, he did not want his messages to “haunt” them in the event of his death, nor did he want to distract the pilot as he struggled to regain control of the plane.

“For the first time in my life, the right thing to do was to sit there and say absolutely nothing,” he added.