Nigel Farage with Arron Banks: they believe ‘ordinary’ Californians can be pitched against Los Angeles liberals

They made their names breaking Britain away from Brussels, but Nigel Farage and his money man Arron Banks have now set themselves an even tougher target — splitting California in two.

The self-styled “bad boys of Brexit” have just returned from the state, where Farage helped raise $1m (£800,000) for a campaign to set up a referendum to divide California down the middle.

The Farage and Banks-backed intervention comes amid competing visions for “Calexit”, with a rival effort aiming to take the state out of the union in reaction to the election of Donald Trump.

The British pair believe the same political playbook as Banks’s Leave.EU campaign would triumph by pitching ordinary people against the liberals of Los Angeles.

The plan is to hold a