Coordinates: 51°21′50″N 0°21′36″E / 51.364°N 0.360°E / 51.364; 0.360

Meopham ( /ˈmɛpəm/) is a large linear village and civil parish in the Borough of Gravesham and ceremonial county of Kent, in England, and lies to the south of Gravesend. The parish covers 6.5 square miles (17 km²), and comprises two villages and two smaller settlements; it has a population of 6,427. Meopham has been described as having one of the longest village streets in Kent, being 7 miles (11 km) in length.

The name of the village derives from Meapaham (Meapa's village): it is first recorded in 788, in the time of King Offa. The modern pronunciation of the name comes from different ways of writing and spelling.

One of the hospitals founded during the Middle Ages was located here; and three medieval manor houses - those of Meopham, Dodmore and Nurstead - governed the land now occupying the parish. Edward Hasted in 1797 described the village as being "out of the way" and with "no well frequented thoroughfare through it". Since the 1920s, when the road numbering scheme started, the main road through the village, the A227, has become busier as a through route connecting North Kent with the M20 motorway at the foot of the North Downs, although this now has been somewhat relieved by the M25.

Nigel Paul Farage ( /ˈfærɑːʒ/, FARR-ahzh; born 3 April 1964, Farnborough, Kent), is a British politician and is the Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a position he also held from September 2006 to November 2009. He is a Member of the European Parliament for South East England and co-chairs the Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

Farage is a founding member of the UKIP, having left the Conservative Party in 1992 after they signed the Maastricht Treaty. Having unsuccessfully campaigned in European and Westminster parliamentary elections for UKIP since 1994, he gained a seat as an MEP for South East England in the 1999 European Parliament Election — the first year the regional list system was used — and was re-elected in 2004 and 2009. Farage describes himself as a libertarian and rejects the notion that he is a conservative.

In September 2006, Farage became the UKIP Leader and led the party through the 2009 European Parliament Election in which it received the second highest share of the popular vote, defeating Labour and the Liberal Democrats with over two million votes. However he stepped down in November 2009 to concentrate on contesting the Speaker John Bercow's seat of Buckingham in the 2010 general election.