Nigel Farage will not be permitted to display the same rudeness as an MP that he exhibited in the EU parliament.

In 2010, Nigel Farage made his reputation with a speech in the European parliament, where he called former Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy a “damp rag.” The speech was inflammatory, insulting, and full of distortions. Farage began by stating, “I don’t want to be rude,” but proceeded to tell Van Rompuy, a softly spoken and erudite politician, “you have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk. The question I want to ask is: ‘Who are you?’”

Van Rompuy’s role was to chair meetings between EU leaders, not, as Farage claimed, to be “the political leader for 500 million people.” Amid heckles and boos in the Strasbourg chamber, Farage accused Van Rompuy of being “the quiet assassin of European democracy” and insulted Belgium, calling it a “non-country.” The newly sworn-in MP for Clacton is unlikely to get away with such unparliamentary behavior in the House of Commons. Farage was fined for his attack on Van Rompuy in 2010, but that 1-minute-and-24-second speech catapulted him to public attention and notoriety across Europe.

“Suddenly the media sat up and took notice,” said Gawain Towler, Reform UK’s head of press, who has worked with Farage for 20 years. “That really put Nigel Farage on the map,” Towler recalled, noting “hundreds of thousands of views” on Greek, Italian, and Dutch YouTube channels.

EU insiders were not surprised by the insults. “It was the usual stuff,” said Guy Verhofstadt, the veteran Belgian MEP who was in the chamber that day. “His style of debating was always like that,” Verhofstadt said. “What he did was attack everybody that stood for Europe. You could know from the start of the debate what he was going to say.”

Farage was first elected to the European parliament in 1999, thanks to proportional representation introduced by Tony Blair for the UK’s European elections that year. Initially, he was not the boisterous performer he would become, but his message was consistent. In one of his first speeches in 1999, his notes shook slightly as he urged the government to “leave this club and get into the real trading world.” Farage and his MEPs were known for stunts: heckling, wearing protest T-shirts, and fixing Union flags to their desks, but they struggled to attract British media attention. Towler, who once dressed in a chicken suit for a photo op about EU leaders’ alleged cowardice in not holding referendums on a treaty, complained that the British press ignored them.

The arrival of the European parliament’s streaming service in 2008, combined with the rise of social media, was a game-changer. Short, punchy clips of Farage haranguing European politicians went viral, getting far more views than the EU’s official channels at the time.

Richard Corbett, a long-serving Labour MEP, recalls initial puzzlement over Farage’s speeches. “They’d get up and start doing a rant about something that had nothing to do with what was on the agenda, completely out of context … but of course, the reason was that it was geared to making a YouTube clip.”

In their occasional meetings on trains or planes, Corbett remembers Farage as “chatty” but someone who “tried to avoid getting caught into discussing facts, figures.” EU civil servants remember him as disrespectful. “It was clear that he despised the civil servants, he despised any rule or custom,” said one former civil servant. “His demeanor was very dismissive, unpleasant.”

“He never did any proper work,” the person added. “He was really just there to disrupt things.” Farage had frequent run-ins with officials over expenses and was docked half his MEP salary in 2018 over allegations of misuse of public funds. He also appointed a woman he met in a Strasbourg bar, rumored to be his girlfriend, to a job as a parliamentary researcher. While he made a significant impact in the chamber, Farage had little influence in committee rooms where legislative work was done. Over a three-year period, he attended only one of 42 meetings of the parliament’s fisheries committee during critical reforms. Between 2014 and 2016, he participated in just four out of 10 European parliament votes, the worst voting record among British MEPs.

For the anti-EU party, this was intentional. Farage and his MEPs were elected “to fight it, not to take part in it,” Towler said. “And they won. In 2016, they won.” As an MP, Farage will face new demands from his 78,000-strong constituency in Clacton. “The one thing we know from his time as an MEP is that he likes being in the limelight,” said Simon Usherwood, a professor of politics at the Open University. “He is not a great paperwork guy.”

Towler, Reform’s spokesperson, said Farage views his constituency work as “absolutely vital,” emphasizing the importance of having a good team of caseworkers to handle tasks.

Usherwood will be watching to see if Farage and other Reform MPs join House of Commons committees. “He could justify not participating in the life of the European parliament because he rejected its legitimacy and authority, but clearly he can’t do that with Westminster,” Usherwood said.

The jury is out on whether Farage will try to be “constructive and useful” or use his seat “as a platform for protest.” Usherwood speculates that Farage wants to be seen in parliament, speaking from the green benches, as part of cultivating an aura of respectability, presumably the next stage of his plans for advancing his career.