Rolling coverage of the Ukip conference in Bournemouth, including Nigel Farage’s final speech as leader and the announcement of his replacement
Paul Nuttall’s speech - Summary
Nigel Farage’s speech - Verdict
Lunchtime summary
Diane James elected leader - Results in full
Diane James’ speech - Verdict
4.25pm BST
Magpie May you have stolen so far our 2% defence spending, you’ve also tried to steal our grammar schools but I think you are going to have a few difficulties getting that one through.
Professionalism though will be top of my agenda. If we are going to reach and achieve the goals this party is still capable of achieving, then change is going to have to happen.
It is not going to be change for change’s sake, it is not going to be change because I think I want to change it and I can’t justify it, it is going to be because change is necessary and justified.
I am not Nigel-like, I am not even Nigel-lite. I’ll never ever pretend to be so. What I will be doing is stepping into his leadership shoes, but I will be doing everything to achieve the political success that he’s handing over to me.
4.12pm BST
The press conference is now over. Diane James probably made quite a good impression. She took questions from everyone who wanted to ask one, and she was brisk, confident and direct. She sounded a bit like a management consultant giving a presentation, but telling clients that for answers to some questions, they’re going to have to wait.
4.09pm BST
Q: Where will Ukip be on the political spectrum? Appealing to Labour voters, on the left? Or to Tory voters, on the right?
James says the questioner should ask her in three months’ time. Her 100 days project will look at issues like this. And it needs to appeal to both.
4.02pm BST
Q: What do you think of Donald Trump? And would you vote for Hilary Clinton?
James says she cannot imagine voting for Clinton.
4.01pm BST
Q: Will you carry on using the phrase “remainiacs’?
Why not, James asks. She says even remain supporters use it.
4.00pm BST
Q: What will you do to help Ukip in the north?
James says she wants two chiefs of staff, one focusing on the south and one focusing on the north.
3.59pm BST
Q: Did you support the Breaking Point poster during the EU referendum?
James says she defended it during the Wembley debate. That poster showed what the situation was in Europe.
3.58pm BST
Q: Would you stand aside if Nigel Farage said he wanted to come back?
James says Farage has made it clear that he has stepped aside from the leadership role.
3.57pm BST
Q: Would you fight a byelection?
Of course, says James. But she would have to go through a selection process. She does not intend parachuting herself into a constituency. She would only stand if she had a link with a constituency.
3.56pm BST
Q: How will you heal the Ukip divisions in Wales?
James says Nathan Gill has her 100% support. She trusts him entirely in terms of his views.
3.52pm BST
James says she has not come across misogyny in Ukip.
Ukip has better mechanisms to root out extremists when selecting candidates, she says.
3.52pm BST
James denies claims she avoided the media during the leadership campaign.
She says she is not worried about Arron Banks setting up an alternative party. Banks has been talking about a movement; that’s different, she says.
3.49pm BST
Q: How will you define success?
James says there are four byelections coming up.
3.45pm BST
Diane James is giving a press conference now.
Q: Can you fill Nigel Farage’s shoes? And can you make Ukip a winning party?
3.40pm BST
Originally the unsuccessful leadership candidates were also due to address the conference this afternoon. That session has been axed from the revised programme too.
3.38pm BST
The original conference agenda said that Neil Hamilton, leader of the Ukip group in the Welsh assembly, would be giving a 15-minute speech tomorrow morning.
But Ukip officials have just issued a revised agenda for tomorrow. Hamilton no longer features instead Nathan Gill, the Welsh MEP and official party leader in Wales (even though Hamilton leads the Welsh assembly group) is giving a speech in the slot originally set aside for Hamilton.
3.15pm BST
And here are some comments on Diane James’s speech from journalists on Twitter.
From the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope
Diane James speaks like the finance diet or of a small company. Lacks the charisma of Nigel Farage. Could be a real problem for @ukip?
If Nigel Farage's speaking style was part jovial pub landlord, Diane James is part amiable-if-stern-when-needed family GP.
Diane James claims she is “not Nigel light” and says “my language might be a little different”. Could this be a softer Ukip? #UKIPConf
Diane James, the David Moyes of politics...
3.12pm BST
At the top of this blog we have got a relatively nice picture of Nigel Farage and Diane James together on stage. But there are alternative ones, as the BBC’s Nick Robinson has discovered.
Any suggestions for what UKIP's new leader @DianeJamesMEP is thinking as @Nigel_Farage puckers up? pic.twitter.com/QjHoj6TZy4
2.53pm BST
Diane James’s speech - Verdict: Unashamedly underwhelming. Whoever succeeded Nigel Farage was likely to plunge Ukip into charisma deficit but, on the basis of that speech, Diane James seems remarkably bland. To her credit, though, she acknowledged quite openly that she was not a colourful character. “I am not Nigel-like, I am not even Nigel-lite,” she said. You certainly can’t argue with that.
Still, dull and sensible is not always a bad thing in politics and, although James did not say anything particularly specific in her speech, she did give some indication as to what sort of leader she will be. She stressed the importance of Ukip having a credible manifesto and she said the party should be offering “pragmatic” solutions to the country’s problems. That means the era of bonkers ideas like compulsory uniforms for taxi drivers is definitely over. By Ukip standards it was a remarkably moderate speech. The only line that slightly jarred was her claim that Ukip was the “opposition party in waiting” (a touch of David Steel telling the Liberals to go back to their constituencies and “prepare for government”?) But she compensated for that with a reasonably good line about the Conservatives and “magpie May” stealing Ukip policies.
2.12pm BST
Diana James was elected with 47% of the vote, my colleagues Rowena Mason and Peter Walker report in their story on her election. (Curiously Ukip uses first-past-the-post for its leadership elections, not the alternative vote, even though the party strongly opposes the use of FPTP at Westminster.)
2.07pm BST
Here is my colleague Rowena Mason’s profile of Diane James.
Related: Diane James offers crumbling Ukip a safe pair of hands
Perhaps [Diane James’] most notable achievement within Ukip is that she has been one of the few senior figures not to have fallen out publicly with Farage.
James is not part of Farage’s inner circle, but those who are close to the former leader say he clearly favoured her as “the only qualified candidate”.
2.01pm BST
James asks people to help her make “Ukip the winning machine will become”.
And that’s it. She gets a round of applause, but it is a bit perfunctory.
1.59pm BST
James says, from one grammar school girl to another, she says stop the fudge, and get on with it - invoke article 50.
She says the best Christmas present Ukip could have would be to have it on 25 December.
1.58pm BST
James says if Theresa May is watching, she is watching the “opposition party in waiting”.
1.57pm BST
James says it must be no to single market membership, no to Brexit lite, and no to keeping free movement.
And it must be yes to exit from the EU, yes to a sovereign United Kingdom, yes to trade and yes to an immigration system that lets in those with the skills and values this country wants.
1.55pm BST
James says the party needs to change.
It won’t be change for the sake of it; it will be because change is necessary.
1.54pm BST
James says Britain is embarking on a new era.
And so is Ukip, she says.
I am not Nigel-like. I am not even Nigel-lite.
1.52pm BST
James pays tribute to Nigel Farage, and asks the audience to applaud him.
1.51pm BST
James says the 17m people who voted for Brexit voted to reach out to the world.
They voted for an outward-looking country, she says.
1.49pm BST
James pays tribute to the work of Ukip MEPs in preparing its policy ideas.
And she says she is glad Nigel Farage will stay in the European parliament givingn grief to the Eurocrats.
1.48pm BST
James says she outlined her first 100 days’ priorities during the campaign.
She wants the party to be “battle ready” for an election, she says.
1.45pm BST
James says Ukip cannot take its eye off the elephant in the room.
It has just one one heat in the contest to leave the EU, she says.
1.43pm BST
James thanks grassroots supporters.
She says councillors face a huge challenge in 2017.
1.42pm BST
James thanks the media for being here.
That is because Ukip are the political change movement, she says.
1.41pm BST
Diane James is speaking now.
She starts by saying “we did it” (ie, win the referendum), and then she says she did it (win the leadership election).
1.37pm BST
The afternoon session has started. Paul Oakden, the current chairman, is announcing the results.
He says 17,917 people voted. Diane James won.
1.30pm BST
In the hall members are now gathering for the announcement of the results of the leadership contest.
1.28pm BST
We will judge whether Brexit means Brexit for me on three very simple measures. By the time the next general election comes along, will we have back our territorial fishing waters around the coast of the United Kingdom? Will we be outside the single market?
And above all the acid test of Brexit, the only time we will really know....that Brexit means Brexit is when that has been put in the bin and we get back a British passport.
I have a feeling they are not going to deliver all of that, and I’m certain they are not going to deliver it unless Ukip is strong and fighting hard in every single constituency in this country. As I say, we have won the war, we must now win the peace.
Not only are there millions of people out there who feel loyal to us, but I don’t think that the harvest of votes that we could potentially get from the Labour Party has really even started yet.
I intend this autumn to travel around other European capitals to try and help independence and democracy movements in those countries too. Who knows I may even go back to America at some point. I’m going to be engaged in political life without leading a political party.
We have to change our management structures, and we have to guard - because one of the problems of success is that it brings people into the party who perhaps don’t do it for altruistic aims for the country or its people but perhaps are more motivated by their own professional careers in politics.
I will be frank at this point, because I can be now. Ukip has not been a happy camp for over a year, and the animosity has spilt over into the media. No one, no one has emerged from this with their head held high ..
The designation process between Leave.EU and VoteLeave created a cancer in the heart of the party and led to its leading lights using Ukip as a football - so much so that the party resembles a jigsaw that has been emptied onto the floor. The new leader must put it back together. And this can only be done through talking to people, not issuing empty threats or pursuing internal naval gazing schemes that will most likely amount to nothing.
The opportunities are there, today is a breakwater in the history of this party. It is a changing of the guard, both Nigel and I are standing down from the stage, and standing down must mean standing down.
The new leader will not benefit in any way, shape or form if any of us attempt to backseat drive. They must be their own person, they must stamp their own mark and they must control every lever of the party.
They must not lead what the Westminster journalists call a Faragista Ukip or a Carswellite Ukip - they must lead Ukip, a Ukip for everyone. They must ensure that the party is a big tent where all talents are utilised and people are not marginalised for simply holding alternative viewpoints.
1.07pm BST
Here are tweets from two Guardian colleagues on the Farage speech.
Paul Nuttall was explicit: Farage should stay away from front line. But Farage, up next, served notice he's not going to.
So Farage quits as leader but will remain leader of UKIP group in EU parliament. That's quite some backseat driver.
12.53pm BST
Nigel Farage’s speech - Verdict: Enoch Powell is one of Nigel Farage’s political heroes, and so there is a certain irony in the fact that Farage’s departure disproves Powell’s most famous contribution to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Echoing comments made by other speakers earlier Farage said that the EU referendum would never have happened if it had not been for Ukip and, unlike a lot of claims made by Brexiteers, this one passes the truth test. (See 9.18am.) It is very rare to see a politician stand down having succeeded so completely in his own terms and, if this speech was triumphalist, then that was understandable. But in fact it was more reflective than smug, and Farage was very interesting as he reminisced on how Ukip had emerged from nothing, and how PR (for the European elections) was absolutely crucial to the party’s success. Whether electoral reformers will regard that as good or bad for their case is another matter.
Otherwise, by Farage’s standards, it was relatively low key. Apart from taking a swipe at Neil Hamilton, he avoided the temptation to engage in internal party score-settling. (Perhaps he got that out of his system with Sky.) Instead he gave us some clues as to what he will be doing next: supporting leave movements in other EU countries, and building up a profile in the US. He repeated his claim that Ukip has a huge opportunity to take votes from Labour. And, interestingly, he set three tests for Brexit. Two of those may well be achieved by 2020: British passports (preferably old-style blue, hard-cover, inconveniently-sized ones, he implied) and withdrawal from the single market. But the chances of Britain having exclusive access to fishing waters up to 200 miles off the coast are slight because EU countries almost certainly would not accept this, and the threat of retaliatory measures would make it not worth the risk (see this House of Commons briefing paper). So it may be that Farage is already setting the conditions for a “Brexit betrayal” narrative that Ukip could use in the 2020 general election.
12.16pm BST
Farage is getting an adulatory standing ovation.
And now they are giving him three cheers - which is very Ukip.
12.15pm BST
Farage ends by saying that, now he is no longer constrained by office, he will be free to speak his mind.
12.14pm BST
Farage says he is not leaving politics. He will support the new Ukip leader. And he will continue to sit in the European parliament leading the Ukip group.
And in the autumn he will travel around Europe helping democracy movements.
12.12pm BST
Farage says he never expected to achieve this.
I have put absolutely all of me into this. I could not have worked any harder or been any more determined. I guess it has been my life’s work to get the party to this point. I could not have done any more. I think, folks, I have done my bit.
12.11pm BST
Farage says the process of Ukip taking votes from Labour has barely started.
Jeremy Corbyn may be a principled man, he says. But he does not believe in Britain.
12.08pm BST
Farage says Ukip was a grassroots party. Until 1999 it did not even have any elected representatives. It did not have nationally-known figures.
It was run by the grassroots, he says.
12.06pm BST
Farage says he wishes the new leader the best of luck. He guesses it will be a her.
His job is not to interfere. But if the new leader wants advice, he is four-square behind the party.
12.05pm BST
Farage says Theresa May said Brexit meant Brexit.
But he thinks her views are starting to change, he says.
12.02pm BST
Farage says Ukip won the 2014 European elections.
Without Ukip, there would have been no referendum, he says. And without the party’s members, there would have been no ground campaign.
Together, we have changed the course of British history.
12.00pm BST
Farage says Ukip were not frightened to talk about the need for immigration controls. At the time that was a taboo subject.
Other people could not touch the subject because they were committed to the EU, and free movement.
11.59am BST
Farage says the advent of PR for the European elections in 1999 made all the difference.
11.57am BST
Farage says he was the first Ukip candidate, at the Eastleigh byelection.
By 164 votes he beat the late, great Screaming Lord Sutch, he says.
11.57am BST
Farage says that it felt like a fairy tale on the night of the referendum when he realised they would win.
He jointed the Anti-federalist League 25 years ago. Not many people can say that, because there weren’t many of them.
11.55am BST
It has finally stopped.
We did it, Farage says. And we could not have done it without you.
11.55am BST
They are still clapping.
11.54am BST
Farage gets a standing ovation as he takes to the stage.
11.52am BST
It includes the clip of President Obama saying the UK will be “at the back of the queue” for a trade deal if it leaves the EU.
That generates loud booing in the hall.
11.52am BST
Nigel Farage is about to speak.
Ukip are first showing a “Farage’s greatest hits” video.
11.50am BST
Crowther says commentators are baffled by the way someone like Nigel Farage, who went to private school and worked in the City, could speak for the people.
But he can, Crowther says.
It took them some years for them to understand that that is what made people want to vote for him.
11.49am BST
Crowther says the “gilded elite” are refusing to accept the referendum result.
And it is being led by the Tory peer Lady Wheatcroft, who has said the Lords should try to block Brexit.
11.43am BST
The Daily Mirror’s Dan Bloom has a very jolly picture gallery of the 11 most Ukip things at the Ukip conference.
11.42am BST
He turns to the future of Ukip’s NEC. (See 10am.)
He says the party’s constitution was set up with the intention of creating a power balance between the leader and the NEC.
11.39am BST
Crowther says Nigel Farage asked him to be party chairman in 2010.
Farage said accepting the job would ruin Crowther’s life. But in fact he had the opportunity to contribute to making history.
11.37am BST
Steve Crowther, the former Ukip party chairman, is speaking now.
He says he has always had a low profile. He is just really here to say goodbye and thank you, he says.
11.36am BST
My colleague Simon Jenkins has written a First thoughts column saying Ukip should now disband. Here’s an excerpt.
Ukip followed the short-lived Referendum party as essentially a single-issue party. Farage has declared that issue over. The party’s fate is now to descend into the grimy fringes of British politics, characterised by petty rivalries and personal disputes. They are held in place only by a collective unpleasantness, and hatred for some perceived foe.
Last June the British people rebelled, peacefully but emphatically, against what it saw as its ruling class. It was a gesture of democratic defiance: to some an act of political suicide, to others of political genius. The nation is still reeling. That the rebellion pumped adrenaline into Ukip’s veins is understandable. But it has done its job. It should respect its victory and go.
Related: Ukip’s work is done – the party should respect its victory and disband
11.33am BST
Huffington Post’s Owen Bennett has high praise for the Paul Nuttall speech.
That @paulnuttallukip speech was his Kinnock 1985 moment. https://t.co/YGwgZu3z9K
11.22am BST
Here are the main points from Paul Nuttall’s speech.
A very relaxed @paulnuttallukip addresses activists. If he'd stood in the leadership election he'd have walked it pic.twitter.com/jlJ1zRLqrK
10.52am BST
Nuttall says it has been a great honour to be deputy leader. He thanks members for their support. They are the lifeblood of the party, he says. Leader and deputy leaders come and go. But without members, the party is nothing.
And that’s it. Nuttall is now getting a very enthusiastic standing ovation.
10.51am BST
Nuttall says eight years ago the party did not register in the polls. Not a single journalist attended its national conference, he says.
But in 2014 it became the first party since 1906 other than Labour or the Conservatives to win a national election.
10.49am BST
Nuttall says there must be some constitutional reform.
He says he has proposed a new party board.
Do not allow the party to become like the European commission that you have destroyed.
10.48am BST
Nuttall says he wants to talk about the new leader.
Ukip has not been a happy camp for over a year, and the animosity has spilled over into the media. No one has emerged from this with their head held high.
The party resembles a jigsaw that has been emptied onto the floor. The new leader must put it back together.
And standing down must mean standing down. The new leader will not benefit if any of us backseat drive.
10.44am BST
Nuttall says he told the Ukip conference a few years ago that Ukip should become the party of the working class. At the time people did not believe that. But now it is becoming clear that that is realistic, he says. He says Labour has lost touch with its working class supporters.
10.43am BST
Nuttall says he wants Britain to now forge better relations with Commonwealth countries.
10.42am BST
Nuttall says the referendum would not have happened without Ukip.
He tells the members that they will be thanked by the generations to come. The Brexit vote will shape Britain’s destiny for the next half century, he says. Britain will now have control of its own future.
10.39am BST
Paul Nuttall, the outgoing deputy leader, is speaking now.
He starts by saying Ukip succeeded. It has got the UK out of this “sclerotic, out-of-date union”.
10.35am BST
This is from the FT’s Sebastian Payne on Nigel Farage’s speech later.
Key messages of Farage's speech today: we won the Brexit war, now need to broker the peace + party must rally behind new leader #UKIPConf
10.33am BST
Stevens says he does not understand the Westminster obsession with staying in the single market.
That would involve accepting unlimited immigration, all EU rules, and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, he says.
We don’t want to be in the single market. We want free trade.
10.31am BST
Stevens says he thinks the UK should either become a free trade area after Brexit (ie, impose no tariffs on imports) or adopt World Trade Organisation rules). And it should do so as soon as possible, he says.
Of course there will be problems, he says. But the threat that firms will relocated to the continent should be ignored. In practice, firms are not going to want to move to countries like Spain, France, Greece or even Germany, he says.
10.28am BST
Michael Crick has also established that Neil Hamilton, the former Tory minister who resigned following the cash-for-questions scandal and who is now leader of the Ukip group in the Welsh assembly, will not be returning to his old party.
Would Neil Hamilton ever defect back to the Tories? "A dog never returns to its vomit," he told me
10.26am BST
Ukip could soon have its own version of Momentum, Channel 4 News’s Michael Crick reports. He has been speaking to Arron Banks, the millionaire Ukip donor who co-founded Leave.EU.
Arron Banks tells me Leave.eu polling members about setting up new Momentum style movement to work alongside Ukip pic.twitter.com/GLqfgYwCyQ
10.25am BST
Stevens criticises Vote Leave for not cooperating with Ukip. There would not have been a referendum without Ukip and Nigel Farage, he says. And he says Vote Leave eventually realised that it did need to talk about immigration in the EU referendum campaign (as Ukip advocated.)
10.23am BST
I’m sitting on the floor at the back of the conference hall and I haven’t had any problems with Ukip members or staff at all. But my colleague Darren McCaffrey hasn’t had such a happy experience.
Just been told by a @UKIP delegate that "I'm a f**king c**t and I should shut the f**k up." Ah... Conference season really has begun.
10.20am BST
Stevens says that, after the election of the new leader, there may be “disgruntled members who seek to disrupt the party”. That must be avoided at all costs, he says.
This gets a cheer from the audience.
10.18am BST
Almost all the seats in the hall are full, although Ukip are not using the main arena at the Bournemouth International Conference centre. They are in one of the smaller rooms. It looks as if there are around 1,000 people in the rooms.
Lord Stevens, the Ukip peer, is currently speaking. The gist of his speech is that all the doom-laden predictions about what would happen if Britain voted for Brexit have been proved wrong.
10.11am BST
Alexandra Phillips, Ukip’s former communications director who has defected to the Tories, was also on the Today programme this morning. This is what she said about feuding in the party.
There are far too many schisms and divisions which I think at this point are irreparable. There are so many factions in Ukip it becomes a Venn diagram, almost, where my enemy’s enemy is my friend.
Part of Nigel [Farage] stepping down was because a lot of things had ground to a halt. Being able to keep the machine oiled and functioning in terms of co-operating and working with the National Executive Committee had all dried up.
10.08am BST
And while I’m on the subject of Ukip articles published over the summer, this Bagehot column in the Economist is definitely worth reading. Here’s an excerpt.
Beyond leaving the EU, virtually nothing unites Ukip. The party is at once libertarian and authoritarian. It preaches individual freedom but contains admirers of Vladimir Putin. It wants to privatise the National Health Service, apart from when it does not. It has flirted with both a tax on luxury goods and deep tax cuts for the richest. It hems and haws on gay marriage, halal food and the burkini. It is vague about what sort of immigrants Britain should let in, and in what numbers. Even on the EU it is utterly divided: some (like Mr Carswell) want Britain outside the union to become a European Singapore, while others (like Aaron Banks, the forthright businessman who bankrolled the party’s pro-Brexit efforts) want something more like a return to the 1950s.
All parties, and especially populist ones, contain a range of views. Yet they tend to congregate around certain stretches of the political spectrum. Founded in pursuit of Brexit alone, UKIP has no such common ground. On sprawling, defining themes like the vocation of the state, the meaning of nationhood, the interaction of public and private spheres, and the roles of pluralism, globalisation and citizenship in modern societies it has no continuity and is irredeemably at odds with itself. That inhibits it from establishing and sticking to the sort of long-term strategy it needs to become and remain more professional.
10.00am BST
Earlier I quoted what Nigel Farage had to say about Ukip’s national executive committee. He made the comment in an article for Breitbart last month. His full critique is so remarkable it is worth quoting at length.
But the barrier to radical change and the modernisation of UKIP was implanted in the mid-1990’s. It is called the National Executive Committee. Many of its current crop are among the lowest grade of people I have ever met. To them, being a member of the governing body of Britain’s third-largest political party is the equivalent of scaling Everest.
People with no qualification in business or politics make the ultimate decisions of whom should be our candidate at a by-election. Or whether the former disgraced Tory MP Neil Hamilton should be given a route back to public life via being elected as an Assembly Member in Wales. It may sound odd to many but I have been a moderniser in Ukip. I have been fought at every step of the way by total amateurs who come to London once a month with sandwiches in their rucksacks, to attend NEC meetings that normally last seven hours.
9.51am BST
In her interview with my colleague Anushka Asthana, Alexandra Phillips, the former Ukip communications chief who has defected to the Tories, explained why Paul Nuttall is right to worry about more Ukip supporters switching. She said under Theresa May the Tories were now implementing Ukip policies.
If you look at our 2015 manifesto, Theresa May has announced it all in the first months of being prime minister – grammar schools, fracking, Brexit means Brexit, controlling immigration. The things that made me resolutely Ukip are the things that Theresa May is doing now.
[Ukip’s] best days are behind it ... Ukip’s mission was to get a referendum and to contribute to the winning of that referendum, and it has done that spectacularly well ... Going forwards it’s the Conservative party that’s better placed to deliver on Brexit.
9.44am BST
Here are some of the other Ukip stories around this morning.
It’s a great shame that the head of our established church is not actually prepared to stand up and fight for our Christian culture in this country. He’s somebody else who should go too.
I don’t know why he joined. Genuinely, I don’t know why he joined.He doesn’t seem to support anything we stand for - it’s very odd.
Mr Farage is due to give his last speech as leader at the party conference in Bournemouth this morning where he will get a hero’s reception for winning the campaign to get Britain out of the EU.
But with his successor due to be unveiled this afternoon, it is understood that the race to lead Ukip is “too close to call” between South East MEP Diane James and former party director Cllr Lisa Duffy with a shock on the cards.
This is the issue that the new leader will have to face and probably one that Nigel Farage never had to face. Now there is a possible new home for people and people may well drift across. That’s why it’s so important that Ukip unifies.
9.18am BST
The United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip) starts its autumn conference in Bournemouth today. Its supporters would claim that it is the most successful party in the history of British politics. Its detractors would claim that it is one of the most shambolic and useless. Both descriptions are reasonably accurate.
Ukip has only won one national election (the European elections in 2014) and it only has one MP, but if you judge a party by whether it has achieved its key objective, then Ukip’s record is hard to fault. Just over 20 years after it was founded, it got exactly what it wanted: a referendum on EU membership, and a vote to leave. No other party can make this boast. There is an argument to be had about quite how important a part Ukip played in the EU referendum campaign itself. (Douglas Carswell, Ukip’s only MP, told the Guardian at the weekend that leave only won because Vote Leave ignored the approach favoured by Ukip’s leader Nigel Farage.) But Ukip was decisive in ensuring that the referendum was held in the first place. David Cameron has a hearty dislike for Farage and Ukip, and he conceded a referendum because he was under pressure to do so from Tory MPs, but those Tories had leverage because the Ukip started soaring after the 2010 general election and Cameron concluded that, without offering a referendum, the Conservative party could not win in 2015 (and/or he could not survive as leader).
Related: Nigel Farage aide defects to Tories claiming a mass exodus from Ukip
Continue reading...