"Politics make strange bedfellows" - Farage is the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), a right-wing conservative movement that aims to lead Britain out of the European Union.
For months now, his proposals have put the government on the back foot -- and this has rapidly increased his party's popularity among voters. Recent surveys show UKIP polling around 15 percent, which would make it the third most important political force in the country, after the Conservatives and the center-left Labour Party, yet ahead of the Liberal Democrats.
Nobody believes that UKIP could win that many votes in the lower house of parliament, the House of Commons -- in part because the British electoral system puts small parties at a disadvantage. But the opinion polls are enough to unsettle British Prime Minister David Cameron and his strategists on Downing Street.
This political pressure comes at a time when Cameron already has his hands full dealing with his own center-right Conservative Party. Tory parliamentarians are pushing him to make a commitment on Britain's future course with the EU.
The political stakes are high and Cameron cannot allow himself to make any mistakes on these issues, having hesitated for too long to take a clear position on Europe. The prime minister has no strategy and has made tactical decisions out of fear of alienating voters. This is also one of the reasons why ranting members of UKIP and rebellious anti-EU members of Cameron's Conservatives are dominating the political discourse. They are making sweeping demands that Cameron cannot meet if he wants to avoid steering his country towards an exit.
Roughly half of all Britons would vote in favor of withdrawing from the EU. Many of them see the debt crisis as proof that the European project has failed. Meanwhile, Cameron has to find a way to appease the British without further annoying his European partners. It was already months ago that he announced that Britain would examine existing European treaties to pick and choose which EU laws and regulations benefit the country. German diplomats are currently trying to convince their British counterparts that it doesn't work that way.
Note EU-Digest: Eurosceptics, Nigel Farage, and a waffling PM - how much worse can it get for Britain
Read more: Cameron Succumbs to Growing Europhobia in the UK - SPIEGEL ONLINE
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