When Nigel Farage dropped in to the offices of The Irish News for a chat some 13 years ago, I struggled to maintain a fixed grin as he set out in detail his conviction that the UK was destined to leave the European Union.

The Brexit referendum, which took place a decade ago tomorrow, later demonstrated that he was much more in tune with the direction of British – as opposed to Irish – public opinion than I was, and the full consequences of the political earthquake of June 23 2016 are still being felt.

Farage was still the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) at the time of his visit to the newspaper I then edited, and growing steadily in prominence, although many observers regarded him as little more than a fringe irritant, who would soon return to obscurity.

He undoubtedly knew how to exploit opportunities, and he had been handed a massive one months earlier when the then prime minister David Cameron made what turned out to be a career-ending error of judgment by agreeing to a poll on his country’s EU membership.

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