The Ukip leader won boos in the Brussels chamber by insulting his parliamentary colleagues. Did he have a point?

Nigel Farage returned to the European parliament on Tuesday and delivered a withering speech to the chamber he had been trying for 17 years to leave. The address began inauspiciously with Farage telling fellow MEPs: “You’re not laughing now.”

But it was Farage’s comment about his colleagues never having done a “proper job” that attracted the most boos, and a rebuke from the chairman.

“I know that virtually none of you have ever done a proper job in your lives, or worked in business, or worked in trade, or indeed ever created a job,” declared Farage.

It was a pithy line that feeds into the schtick about a bloated Brussels filled with born bureaucrats. But is it true?

There are currently 748 members of the European parliament (MEPs). Of the 73 from the UK, a fair smattering have had careers based solely in the world of politics – as advisers and speechwriters, as councillors, or working for trade unions.

It might be inferred from his remarks on Tuesday that these occupations would not be considered by Farage to be “proper jobs”. And, yes, one MEP’s pre-political career is listed as “county cricketer”.

But among the group are also a restaurateur, an actor, a police officer, several farmers, a couple of teachers, an NHS medical scientist, the director of an umbrella business, a psychiatrist, an investment banker, a couple of accountants, a solid showing of lawyers, and a few academics.

Geoffrey Van Orden, a Conservative party MEP, served in the British army for more than 20 years, after which he became an instructor of German armed forces in Hamburg. He was made brigadier in 1991, and was only elected to the European parliament after a stint at the joint intelligence committee in London and another at Nato.

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Vicky Ford, also a Conservative MEP, ticks the Farageian box of having “worked in business”. She spent 14 years in banking, most of which were spent at JP Morgan, of which she eventually became a vice-president.

Then there’s Neena Gill, who prior to being elected as a Labour MEP in 1999 was the chief executive of Asra group and the Newlon housing group, which provide affordable housing across England. During her hiatus from the European parliament between 2009 and 2014 she worked as vice-president of corporate affairs for SAS Software.

From Farage’s own party come Julia Reid, who has a PhD in pharmacology and worked as a diabetes laboratory researcher, Steven Woolfe, a barrister, and Patrick O’Flynn, former political editor of the Daily Express. (It is uncertain, however, that journalism would be regarded by the Ukip leader as a proper job, either.)

Beyond the Ukip clan, Alyn Smith (SNP) was a commercial lawyer, Sajjad Karim (Conservative) a solicitor working on serious fraud cases, Kay Swinburne (Conservative) worked in investment banking, and Mary Honeyball (Labour) spent her career in the voluntary sector, and was general secretary of the Association of Chief Officers of Probation and chief executive of Gingerbread, a charity for single-parent families.

And one can only imagine the indignation at Farage’s comments of Richard Ashworth, MEP and previous leader of the Conservative party in the European parliament, who prior to his political career spent more than 30 years as a dairy farmer in East Sussex and acted as chairman of United Milk Plc and NFU Corporate.

Attention, meanwhile, turned on Tuesday to Farage’s own record while an MEP in the European parliament. As one observer pointed out on Twitter, it’s not exactly the scorecard of a star employee: