Former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage is lucky to be alive after a plane carrying a UKIP banner nose-dived into a field yesterday.

Mr Farage, 46, was admitted to hospital where he is expected to remain for five to six days with two broken ribs, a chipped spine and damage to his sternum. 

The MEP who is standing in the general election for Buckingham said: “The pilot and I have had a miraculous escape. I am bloody lucky to be alive, I thought we weren’t going to make it.”

Just minutes after take-off, the plane crashed in an airfield in Northamptonshire, causing the engine to break off and the aircraft to land upside down.

The flamboyant politician, who had recently been joking about hoping the plane didn’t “blow up and crash”, had to be dragged bloodied and semi-conscious from the smashed aircraft.

UKIP spokesman Duncan Barnes said that Mr Farage was in “considerable pain” but was mostly concerned about the pilot’s health.

Mr Farage, who said he wanted to be more “hands-on” in the campaign, left the Winchester area and flew into Hinton, where he boarded the light aircraft heading towards Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, as he did not want to be pictured “like all the other politicians at a boring ballot box”.

The pilot, Justin Adams, who issued a mayday call shortly after take-off, is believed to have suffered spinal injuries and was immediately taken to Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry by air ambulance. He is no longer in a critical condition.