Nigel Farage, Possible Undead Vampire, Is Leader of UKIP Again

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Good news for people who say "samosas are just pasties with dots on their head" and lock their front doors whenever they hear a car outside playing hip-hop: Nigel Farage has returned from beyond the grave to reclaim his rightful place as the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), for whom he will continue his work of being the acceptable, if newt-like, face of British racism.

Farage—who, you will remember, tendered his resignation as leader of UKIP on Friday, after failing to win the not-even-that-hotly-contested South Thanet constituency—was reinstated as leader of the party today after UKIP rejected his resignation. You know when vampires don't die at the end of vampire movies, but instead the camera zooms in on their one bloodied eye, and it just suddenly blinks? It's like that, but imagine the vampire hated its own traditional Romanian roots, and campaigned to have itself deported away from the country where it had made its blood-thirsty home, because they come over here, these vampires, in their gangs, and they drain our children of their sweet and tender blood, don't they? They come over here and they kill our children with their teeth and they have the temerity to ask the NHS for more plasma.

In a statement today, the party said: "As promised, Nigel Farage tendered his official resignation as leader of UKIP to the NEC. This offer was unanimously rejected by the NEC members who produced overwhelmingly evidence that the UKIP membership did not want Nigel to go."

It went on: "The referendum campaign has already begun this week and we need our best team to fight that campaign led by Nigel. He has therefore been persuaded by the NEC to withdraw his resignation and remains leader of UKIP."

Because who else are they going to have lead the party? Mark Reckless? Mark Reckless is an egg that somehow ended up with a Bond villain's name. Suzanne Evans? Suzanne Evans is a woman, and UKIP distrust women. Douglas Carswell? Who would vote for a man who looks like he is hired to scare children away from farms? No, it has to be Nigel Farage, a bottle of Matey floating in a bath of real ale. Because, despite their trouncing at the hands of the first-past-the-post voting system, that's what so many people in Britain want: none of this benefits system or social fairness or strong economy or anything like that. We want a man who almost certainly has a story about someone being banned from a members-only club for doing something vulgar with a lit cigar.

Watch: We Filmed at UKIP's Insane Party Conference:

On one hand, it feels like UKIP have, to an extent, run their course: they exerted everything in the election, their biggest shot at relevance for the next five years barring the (admittedly nailed-on) European referendum. On the other hand: the party got a 13 percent vote share in Thursday's General Election. And that makes Farage's job ever easier, now: he can drop his act of being a human meme, instead targeting the people he's already won onside, turning to a crowd of already half-racist Middle Englanders and whipping them up into a frenzy, telling them the health service is just some AIDS-specializing foreigns-only situation, reminding them of the Good Old Days where you could still walk down the street saying "wop," shake hands, drink pints, smoke tabs.

This is the danger, really, a danger that swings both ways. Farage is the fist around the beating heart of UKIP: he is like a screaming, possessed vessel of a racist god, but he's the only hope they have, and they know that. With Farage reinstated, they are strong again, revitalized. While Labour pisses about finding the next person to inoffensively lose to the Tories and the Lib Dems melt like a sad snowman, Farage glows in his dark plotting cave, every fibre growing stronger. UKIP are nothing without Farage. Farage is nothing without UKIP.

Because whether you're pro-UKIP or not, it is totally alarming that Nigel Farage seemingly will not die. And that's not being figurative: the man has countered cancer, a plane crash, and now his own resignation. He is the dictionary definition of "unkillable." And that now places us all in a bizarre alt-horror film, of creaking doors and moving shadows. You go to bed, and the wind whispers: "Aren't them lot bad at driving?" You close the curtains but you feel a chill: lizard-like tongues hiss the words, "Why do their weddings have to go on for three days?" And there is a distant howling, and dark clouds envelope the moon, and you turn around and he is behind you—proud, gray, and naked, his penis slimily uncoiling like a chameleon's tongue—and he leans close, Nigel, he leans close to you, and flutters his eyelids and says: "Europe is bad."

Farage is back, everybody. Rejoice about it as you will.

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