PORTSMOUTH: Nigel Farage is in his element: standing in a traditional British pub with a pint of beer in his hand, and lapping up the attacks on his anti-EU, anti-immigration UK Independence Party.
"To be honest with you, the more they abuse us, the better we do," Farage later tells AFP with a smile in the naval city of Portsmouth, southern England, where he is on the campaign trail for the European parliament elections.
For Farage, "they" are the three political parties of the British establishment: Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives, their Liberal Democrat coalition partners, and the Labour opposition.
"They" also includes the British media who in recent weeks have uncovered a series of racism scandals about UKIP candidates.
The chain-smoking Farage has been forced to disown a series of such rogue "Ukippers", as he tries to turn a chaotic one-man band into a serious political party capable of winning its first seat in the British parliament.
UKIP has just nine MEPs, but its popularity has surged in recent months. A recent poll put it on 38 percent for the European elections, with Labour on 27 percent, the Conservatives on 18 percent and the Liberal Democrats on eight percent.
So long, then, to the candidate who said Africans should "kill themselves off". Farewell to another who called Islam "evil". Auf wiedersehen to one who called recent floods divine punishment for the legalisation of gay marriage. And adieu to one who said ex-foreign minister David Miliband was "not British" because his Jewish parents fled Nazi-occupied Europe.
Farage is not immune to the odd faux pas himself, such as when he recently expressed his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin "as an operator, but not as a man" for his handling of the Syrian civil war.
But the aim is to finally counter Cameron's description of UKIP as full of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists".
- 'We are on our way' -
"I've seen the light," exclaims candidate Janice Atkinson, who styles herself as an heir to the "Iron Lady", late Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
Like all UKIP candidates, she has had to sign a statement promising that she did not have any "skeletons in the closet".
It shows the control that Farage is exerting over his party, but he still looks relaxed as he stands in the Isambard Kingdom Brunel pub in Portsmouth.
Named after the pioneering 19th century civil engineer, its location in this faded southern naval port in the shadow of Britain's scuttled aircraft carriers symbolises the past glories that UKIP would love to return to Britain -- starting with an exit from the European Union.
At 50, Farage is enjoying a fourth chance at life.
The former commodities trader has survived a serious road accident, testicular cancer and the crash of a plane that was pulling a UKIP electoral barrier during Britain's 2010 general election campaign.
A father of four, he is married to a German.
"I love Europe," Farage tells AFP during a post-pub chat at the city's Guildhall. "But I hate the flag. I hate the anthem. I hate the institutions."
Now he is aiming to improve UKIP's tally of nine members in the European parliament -- the place where Farage once lambasted EU president Herman Van Rompuy as having the "charisma of a damp rag".
At home, he is hoping for a "no" vote in the 2017 referendum promised by Cameron on whether Britain should stay in the EU.
The party's electoral literature says some three quarters of British laws are made in Brussels, and that 26 million Europeans want to move to Britain to find work.
Farage himself looks like he comes from a bygone era, with his blazers and corduroy trousers, his love for cricket, rugby and sea fishing, and his abhorrence of political correctness.
He says he is a "classic liberal" and refused the offer of an alliance with French far-right leader Marine le Pen, saying it was "like one of these classical novels where the guy keeps on proposing marriage".
In their recent book "Revolt on the Right", British academics Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford said UKIP's success stemmed from a "genuine insurgency outside the establish party system".
"We are on our way," says Farage.
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