This is possibly the best resignation speech from a politician I've ever heard. It is short, direct and to the point yet without ambiguity or any other disfiguration. Nigel Farage is perhaps the only politician in my life time who entered politics with a discrete, well-defined, limited ambition who then achieved that ambition against enormous obstacles, and then walked away satisfied that he'd more or less done the job he set out to do.
That is how it should be, but almost never is. For this reason alone, it would not be appropriate to disfigure his deserved praise with caveats about not always agreeing with him. Nigel Farage deserves what the political establishment will certainly be loathe to give him: a peerage.
"I came into politics from business because I believed this nation should be self-governing. I have never been, and I have never wanted to be, a career politician. My aim in being in politics was to get Britain out of the European Union. That is what we voted for in that referendum two weeks ago, and that is why I now feel that I've 'done my bit', that I couldn't possibly achieve more than we managed to get in that referendum, and so I feel it's right that I should now stand aside as leader of UKIP."
"I will continue to support the party; I will support the new leader; I will watch the renegotiation process in Brussels like a hawk, and perhaps comment in the European Parliament from time to time. I'm also very keen to help the independence movements that are springing up in other parts of the European Union because I'm certain of one thing: you haven't seen the last country that wants to leave the E.U."
"It has been a huge chunk of my life doing this and it's not easy perhaps when you feel a degree of ownership of something to let it go, but it does come, as I say, at a cost... to me and perhaps to those around me. During the referendum campaign I said: 'I want my country back!' And what I'm saying today is 'I want my life back!' And it begins right now! Thank you!"
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