Flying Free

by Nigel Farage

  Then I thought about fuel. Cigarettes were abandoned too.

  The condemned man had not had a hearty breakfast for fear of regurgitating it in flight. He was not to have a last cigarette either. He just shrugged.

  With all options gone, I was suddenly very calm. Like a Great War subaltern, I just hoped not that I would escape the inevitable but that it would be quick.

  I was staring straight down at the airfield now. We were descending fast. The plane was bucking and lurching. It was fighting Jason like a bucking bronco as he made sure that we cleared the hamlet beneath, but he could no longer keep the nose up. We cleared a hedge like a hunter. By reflex I tightened my safety harness. There was rising ground ahead.

  This was it.

  The banner hit the ground. We tipped forward. We nosedived from 38 foot, directly into the turf.

  The plane and both of us knew what it was like to receive a Sugar Ray Leonard bolo to the face.

  For those wondering, it hurts.

  I closed my eyes a split second before the moment of impact.

  I expected that to be the last light I ever saw.

  There was a lurching, a flurry of hard blows to the body, forcing the breath from me. The ‘bang’ of impact turned into a slow ‘crunch’ and a groan as the fabric of the plane buckled and seared. The plane toppled forward.

  I opened my eyes again.

  There are some who will remember the effect when an old cinema reel broke – the groan of the dying soundtrack, the flapping of the film, the sudden bright light. It was like that, only amplified a thousandfold.

  My first thought was, ‘There is light. Good God. I am still here.’

  Nearing death causes shock but so, it seems, does surviving. That astounding awareness of not being dead takes a few seconds to sink in. The advent of death had so far internalised my thoughts that I now had to drag them out again, kicking and screaming, into awareness of the world.

  And, of course, the world being what it is, of pain.

  I was staring at mud-streaked turf just four inches from my nose. The earth’s rotation had accelerated a hundred times. Blur. Sickness. Disorientation. I did not even know which way up I was.

  My blood was dripping onto the grass. I was still strapped tight into the seat, helpless as an infant. Someone was calling my name. ‘Nigel? Nigel? You all right?’

  That was … yes … the pilot, I thought. Jason. He was alive. He had brought us down alive…

  He was groaning. ‘Nigel? You all right?’

  I tried to answer. I discovered that I could not speak nor, it seemed, breathe. I remembered that breathing was important, so I tried to do it. It hurt.

  ‘Yes…’ I croaked at last. ‘Yes, I’m OK. You all right?’

  ‘Not great,’ Jason answered. ‘Not … great … but … OK…’

  As full consciousness returned, pain started to gnaw hard – at my ribs, at my back, at my knees and calves. I wriggled my legs and waggled my toes. It was an enormous relief to find that I still had control of them.

  Jason mumbled something – something about fuel. It was only then that I realised that I was drenched in liquid. It was running up my back, seeping under my collar to my hair. And it had a familiar smell – that of Zippos.

  For the first time, terror kicked in.

  There had been fear aplenty as we approached impact, but it had been a strangely calm fear, turning slowly to resignation – perhaps because there was nothing whatever that I could do to alter the outcome. I simply handed over control to the gods. There had been a lot of adrenalin there too. I seemed to have used my entire supply.

  This was far, far worse. I had just returned to life and considered the future. Now, upside down, bound and impotent, I was going to be burned to death – my worst terror from my worst nightmares.

  I later learned that, just before the crash, Jason had flicked the switch to turn off all electrics in the plane. It may have been that one action which prevented my nightmares from coming true.

  There should be – there must be – something that I could do. I just could not think what it was at the time.

  I fumbled for the buckle at my right hip. I pushed at it. I pulled at it. I wrenched at it. I could not release the straps that were causing me so much pain, preventing my breathing and threatening me with ignominious and agonising death.

  It seemed that the buckle had been crushed or that I was too feeble to free myself. In fact, as I was to be told later, I was suffering from the same disorientation as many car accident victims. When you are upside down, you pull in the wrong direction.

  Helplessness was hateful.

  There were footfalls. There was panting.

  Duncan Barkes is not built for running, but he had sprinted the quarter mile to the crash. Now he bent down. He puffed, ‘Nigel… Nigel, are you all right?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared. Just get me out of this fucking thing.’

  I was vaguely aware of the photographer. This was his lucky day (he was to make a great deal of money out of what I had thought to be a mildly amusing publicity stunt). He kept snapping. I would have resented this, but I know something of the detachment afforded by a camera lens.

  Duncan’s hand reached in and undid the buckle. I slumped down, sprawled.

  He and another man (a passing cyclist whose name I have never learned but whom I would love to thank in person) dragged me from the wreckage. They raised me to my feet. I just propped myself up on the wheel of the upside-down plane as the two men ran around to attend to Jason. It was very silent. I felt very, very ill – sick, woozy and only half conscious. A blackbird wolf-whistled at me.

  Jason was trapped in tangled metal. He could not be moved. Nothing more could be done save keeping the fire-extinguisher close at hand. The emergency services were on their way.

  I reeled off into the long grass. Thirty or forty yards from the shattered plane, I stopped, sagged and reached for the packet of Rothmans. My face was badly swollen. I discovered that I could not speak very well. As Duncan approached, I said, ‘Ligh’ me wug of ’ese, wiw you?’

  Duncan was quite reasonably concerned about aviation fuel on my clothes. I was past all such concerns. He stood well back as though lighting the blue touch-paper on a firework. I drew deep on the cigarette. It did nothing for me save make me feel still sicker. After another attempt, I threw it down and stamped it out with my heel.

  God, I really must be dying.

  We waited for the ambulance. There obviously had been an extra supply of adrenalin as I hung there suspended, dreading being brewed up, because now it fled. I needed every ounce of energy just to stay upright.

  My suit trousers were glued with blood to my thighs and knees. My upper lip was bleeding. My breastbone and the surrounding area hurt like hell. Expanding the chest was agonising, so I was starved of oxygen. My lungs seemed full of treacle but I could not cough.

  I wanted to telephone someone just to assert my existence, but I patted my pockets in vain. My phone had fallen from my pocket and lay somewhere in the crushed cockpit of the plane. I seriously considered returning to retrieve it, but quickly realised that I would never make it that far.

  It did not occur to me at the time, but I suppose I should be very glad that no one received a call to tell them, ‘He’o. Sh Niwel. My klane jush twashk.’

  Somewhere in there, the ambulance arrived. I kept mumbling about Jason. They assured me that they were cutting him out. He was going to be OK. They eased me into the ambulance.

  I was sure by now that I must have suffered some terminal internal injury because I was inexplicably sinking fast. Unconsciousness seemed as appealing as a deep bed, but they weren’t allowing me to sink into it. The orderlies were asking me my name, my age… I did not want to speak. I gave them two fingers. I was furious at their constant interference.

  We bounced off the airfield onto the road. The siren started sawing at the morning air.

  I don’t think that I ever w
holly lost consciousness. Every least bump in the road felt like a bodyblow. People were tinkering with me all the way. I must have drifted some way off, though, because I remember nothing but those irritations until, still with lights flashing and siren howling, I was stretchered out at the entrance to Banbury hospital.

  A reception committee was waiting for me in A&E. A dozen wholly wonderful people, including a pretty blonde Dutch nurse who may or may not have been an angel on work experience, wired me up, fondled and soothed me. They stitched up my lip. I was immediately rushed into a CAT scan.

  They explained very patiently that, although substantially chipped and scuffed, I was not in obvious and immediate danger. Aside from a punctured lung, I appeared to have suffered no adverse internal effects. I had somehow avoided obvious harm to spleen, heart and all the other soft and pulsing bits.

  I had, however, chipped two vertebrae, fractured the sternum and several ribs, aside from the facial damage and multiple contusions and abrasions.

  I would have to be moved to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford for further investigation. Because of the impact to the chest, they were concerned about my heart, which must have been put under enormous stress.

  My heart appeared to be concerned about my heart too. It was still pounding at my chest walls, asking to be let out. It sounded very healthy to me.

  The journey to Banbury had seemed rough. The journey to Oxford was sedate and relatively comfortable. This may have owed something to smoother roads and less urgent driving. It may also have had something to do with sister morphine, who was by now keeping me company.

  I was unaware – and wholly unconcerned – that the singularly undignified pictures of me, crumpled, sprawled and bloodied, were already fetchingly adorning the main page of Google News.

  A lady from East Sussex later cooed at me that the publicity had been to die for. I was able to assure her that she was totally wrong.

  *

  The general view, which I was unable to share at first but with which I heartily concurred so soon as cogency returned, was that I had been phenomenally lucky.

  I did not feel lucky at first. I was in pain. I could not smoke. I had missed election day. I was kept in a high maintenance ward whilst they monitored my heart so I had no television. My phone was still somewhere in the wreckage. Kirsten, who had been surprised by the news when at a PTA meeting, and our south-east party organiser, Steve Harris, visited me and kept me posted of the news as best they could. I was tetchy.

  Such news as at last filtered through to me from Buckingham the next morning was disappointing, albeit by now expected. John Stevens, with 21.4 per cent, had forced me, with 17.4 per cent, into third place. Across the nation, UKIP scored just 3.1 per cent – nearly a million voters, which was a substantial increase but, as ever at ‘first past the post’ general elections, far less impressive than I had hoped.

  If ever there were proportional representation, UKIP would fare well, because we are second choice for millions who only vote for Labour, the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats because ‘we don’t want that other chap to win’.

  The fact, which will become increasingly apparent as the pendulum swings this way and that to no discernible effect, is that it makes no difference which of the conventional parties wins, because all have systematically eroded the power of an elected government to do anything at all.

  Those ardent, sincere pre-election promises – about immigration, crime and punishment, taxation, education, foreign policy and so on – all should be clearly marked with the caveat ‘SUBJECT TO PERMISSION FROM THE UNELECTED EUROPEAN COMMISSION WHICH WILL NOT BE GIVEN BUT WE DO SO HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE IDEA.’

  Until we leave the EU, our elected representatives are impotent. I would argue, then, that a vote for UKIP is the only one that makes any difference at all.

  And I believe that, after a few more years of discovering how irrelevant we have become in our own governance, after a few more years of seeing our money, which could have gone to our schools or to reducing our taxes, vanishing into the maws of the unelected, unwanted Commission to bolster their power and to bail out distant nations, we will at last start to reclaim our hard-won power to govern ourselves.

  UKIP’s growth has sometimes seemed infinitely slow, but just writing this book has reminded me how rapid in fact it has been. It was only twelve years since three of us had stolen into the European Parliament like bewildered but bolshie schoolchildren on the first day of term.

  We had since then come second in a British national election, consistently drawn attention to the excesses and impertinence of the usurpers of democracy and won nearly a million diehard supporters willing to vote for us at a general election notwithstanding ancient tribal loyalties and fear of bad government. We were – we are – on our way.

  But witnessing all this at third hand was painful. Despite – and thanks to – the excellent treatment I received, I was able to leave hospital on the Saturday morning.

  My experience of the NHS tallies with that of just about everyone I have ever met. When it comes to diagnosing cancer, where different departments, endless bureaucracy, administrators and idiotic government-imposed ‘targets’ are involved, it is dire. Where there is urgent need and hands-on practitioners are able to do what they do best without let or hindrance, it is simply magnificent. Accountants, administrators, consultants, politicians and lawyers impede and prevent good practice. They should serve and assist doctors and nurses, not try to lead them.

  *

  I returned home to a clamour from the media. Gordon Brown was still refusing to accept the inevitable. Cameron and Clegg were busy negotiating the coalition. I was a colourful sideshow.

  There were 233 new MPs. The press should have had countless human-interest stories – Independents, farmers, youth leaders, miners, doctors, nurses, scholars, students, gentry… There were none.

  Today’s politicians have all worked in their parties’ research departments or on subsidised think tanks and been schooled in advanced obedience, answer-avoidance and erasion of ideology before being parachuted into their seats. Few have ever done anything useful or served their communities save as ambitious councillors. They are all old hat, all well-known to Westminster pundits. This is the age of mediocracy.

  So the media were bombarding my home and the press office in hope of a picture of me scowling or falling over or something.

  I did the only thing possible. I rang the Press Association and offered myself for interview. I took the journalist down to my local, the George and Dragon in Downe, where I was photographed with a pint of bitter. The Sunday lunchtime crowd looked understandably astounded to see me there.

  I was shattered, and increasingly aware of my injuries now that I was up and without constant care.

  They were not merely physical injuries. They never are. Those four or five minutes before the crash and three or four after, first calmly awaiting, then fiercely rejecting, death, had shaken me.

  It seems that, whilst others age slowly and have time to habituate themselves to self-doubt and to resignation, I am destined to age in dramatic increments every twenty-five years or so.

  And yes, I had unquestionably aged. My back injuries mean that I can never again play golf nor (which is hardly a shock to the system) do much in the way of manual labour. I tire where formerly I thought myself tireless. Heavy nights out after long days’ work in Brussels or Strasbourg are generally a thing of the past.

  But such incidents also make you re-evaluate your life and reconsider the importance of those things to which once you awarded priority.

  I recognised that a lot of my energies had gone into petty worries about things which I could not change or which required abilities others possessed far more than I. I resolved that I would stop getting excited about trivial things – a bad habit which youth thinks a demonstration of control.

  I have more or less kept that resolution.

  I also resolved that I would devote a great deal more time to mys
elf and to the children. They had been neglected over the years. So had I.

  I have found it harder to keep that one. I no longer seek engagements just because I love battling and meeting the public (maybe that overdose of adrenalin has diminished the addiction?), but the cause is too important to be neglected and I still feel it necessary to challenge complacency and dishonesty in the Parliament and to pass on the knowledge and the insights which I am privileged to possess, not merely at home in Britain but wherever the people are suffering, know that something is badly wrong and are struggling for a voice.

  So I was back in the chamber in Brussels seven weeks after the accident.

  My diary remains more black than white, but I actually look forward to quiet evenings where once I dreaded them, and there are several weekends in there marked only ‘fishing’ or ‘cricket’, the prospect of which sustains me through the tedium of being on show.

  I am, I think, soberer, more reflective.

  Good God. I might even be growing up a bit.

  *

  In that first week, I received a charming letter from David Cameron, wishing me well.

  I had first met Cameron at Blenheim Palace back in 2001. We were both appearing on a BBC South politics programme. Just as the interview began, the heavens opened. We sheltered beneath an umbrella and tried to look and sound vaguely intelligent and composed with our hair in dripping spikes, shirts and jackets clinging to us whilst we raised our voices above the tattoo of the downpour on a huge golf umbrella.

  We disagreed, of course – though in those days, like all politicians, he was far more Eurosceptic than now when in office (as late as 2008, he gave a ‘cast-iron guarantee’ that an incoming Conservative government would carry out its promise to hold a referendum and recommend a ‘No’ vote on Lisbon). But that sort of experience creates a bond. When next we met, it was for Question Time in Bournemouth. We spent much of the evening on the roof smoking cigarettes – all of them mine.

  We stayed on for the post-broadcast dinner. He was amiable, polite, thoughtful, charming – a generally clubbable, nice chap who did not strike me as particularly personally ambitious or assertive. Certainly more a young Willie than a Maggie, I would have said, but of course Eton is good at that.