Afternoon summary
- Ukip has elected Diane James as its first female leader, as the party faces a struggle for relevance after the Brexit vote and departure of Nigel Farage. As Rowena Mason and Peter Walker report, James, a former parliamentary candidate who came close to taking Eastleigh off the Liberal Democrats in 2013, won with 47% of the vote out of a wide field of relative unknowns. The 56-year-old former businesswoman will have to contend with a party riven by infighting between various factions, including Farage loyalists, a circle around the former Conservative cabinet minister Neil Hamilton, and others close to Douglas Carswell, the party’s only MP.
- James has exerted her authority over the party by axing planned conference speeches by Neil Hamiltion, leader of the Ukip group in the Welsh assembly, Lisa Duffy, her main rival for the leadership, and the other leadership candidates. Hamilton, and to a lesser extent Duffy, are seen as critics of the Farage wing of Ukip with which James is loosely associated. James also said at a press conference that if party members did not agree to back the party reforms she is proposing, they could leave.
- James has accused Theresa May of stealing Ukip policies. In her speech she said:
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.
- James has said she will make Ukip more professional. In her speech she said:
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.
- James has said she will not try to copy Farage’s approach to leadership. She said in her speech:
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.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
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.
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.
Q: What do you think of Donald Trump? And would you vote for Hilary Clinton?
James says she cannot imagine voting for Clinton.
The jury is still out on Trump, she says.
But she says it is up to the Americans to choose their president.
Q: Will you carry on using the phrase “remainiacs’?
Why not, James asks. She says even remain supporters use it.
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.
Q: Will Paul Nuttall take the post for the north?
James says she has not decided yet.
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.
Q: Why have Neil Hamilton and the other leadership candidates been removed from the conference programme?
James says that was her decision. She was entitled to change the programme, and she did so.
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.
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.
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.
Q: Can he be an MEP and a member of the Welsh assembly?
Why not, asks James. She says the way the European parliament is run is a farce. Gill is in Brussels when it is necessary.
James says she has not come across misogyny in Ukip.
Ukip has better mechanisms to root out extremists when selecting candidates, she says.
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.
She says she would be willing to meet Douglas Carswell to discuss his differences with the party. They could meet next week, she says.
Q: Do you want members to leave if they don’t accept your plans to get rid of the NEC?
James says she wants people to stay. But members must get behind what is accepted. If they don’t do that, they can leave, she says.
Q: How will you define success?
James says there are four byelections coming up.
And she thinks Theresa May will call an early election, possibly next May.
Diane James's press conference
Diane James is giving a press conference now.
Q: Can you fill Nigel Farage’s shoes? And can you make Ukip a winning party?
James says she does now know what Farage’s shoe size is.
She says her focus is on the first 100 days. She thinks her profile will rise. How many people can name the Lib Dem leader?
Q: Paul Nuttall said Ukip must unite or die.
James says she does not know why he said that. She was surprised.
She urges the media to give her time and to not carry on the negative narrative about
Originally the unsuccessful leadership candidates were also due to address the conference this afternoon. That session has been axed from the revised programme too.
Neil Hamilton axed from speaking slot
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.
Is Hamilton the first victim of a Diane James purge? James is about to give a press conference so we may find out.
Updated
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?
— Christopher Hope (@christopherhope) September 16, 2016
From the Guardian’s Peter Walker
If Nigel Farage's speaking style was part jovial pub landlord, Diane James is part amiable-if-stern-when-needed family GP.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) September 16, 2016
From the FT’s Sebastian Payne
Diane James claims she is “not Nigel light” and says “my language might be a little different”. Could this be a softer Ukip? #UKIPConf
— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) September 16, 2016
From the Sunday Times’ Tim Shipman
Diane James, the David Moyes of politics...
— Tim Shipman (@ShippersUnbound) September 16, 2016
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
— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) September 16, 2016
Diane James's speech - Verdict
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.
But that only raised the question that Alexander Phillips (see 9.51am) and others have been asking: if Theresa May is adopting Ukip policies, then what is the role for Ukip? Like Farage earlier, James said Ukip would be insisting that Brexit does actually materialise, but she sounded far less suspicious on this front than Farage did and her demands (see 1.57pm) sounded much the same as Liam Fox and David Davis’s. In fact, about the only thing she said that would have sounded out of place in a speech at the Conservative party conference was her attack on first-past-the-post.
And that’s why Labour will be pleased by the speech. Ukip lead by a working-class leader with a northern accent committed to blue collar issues would have been a huge threat to Jeremy Corbyn. A party led by someone who sounds like a Tory is much less of a worry.
But in one respect, at least, James’s election should make Labour feel uncomfortable. The Tories are on their second female leader, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the DUP all have female leaders, the Greens have one too, but the only parties yet to get in on the act are the UK’s two biggest “progressive” ones, Labour and the Lib Dems. Quite why this should be is a bit of a mystery. If anyone can explain it, please post below.
Updated
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.)
Here is my colleague Rowena Mason’s profile of Diane James.
And here is an extract.
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”.
She was also publicly endorsed by Arron Banks, the donor with major influence in the party, who is pushing for internal reforms. Like Farage, he is concerned about the power of Ukip’s elected national executive committee, which prevented the initial frontrunner for the leadership, Steven Woolfe, from standing because he filed his application forms 17 minutes late.
“Diane gave an interview saying if people step out of line, they will be getting their P45s. Nigel is a great politician but maybe not a great man manager,” Banks says. “Diane is probably more steely than Nigel. And she needs to deal with them.”
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.
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.
James claims Ukip is the “opposition party in waiting”
James says if Theresa May is watching, she is watching the “opposition party in waiting”.
- James claims Ukip is the “opposition party in waiting”.
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.
James says the party needs to change.
It won’t be change for the sake of it; it will be because change is necessary.
She wants Ukip to be a winning machine, she says.
- James says party structure needs to change.
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.
But she will do everything she can to be successful.
She says politics is different from what she has done before - leading companies and boards, in the public and private sector.
She says she will need the party to support her.
And she supports Ukip values: democracy, opportunity and pragmatic solutions to the country’s problems.
She says she will always be honest. And she will always support the party’s values.
James pays tribute to Nigel Farage, and asks the audience to applaud him.
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.
And they voted for control of the borders.
She says if the Tories do not insist on control of borders, Ukip will fight them.
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.
James says Ukip must prepare manifesto to be “battle ready” for an election
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.
At the last election Ukip’s manifesto was the best one available. She wants to ensure that applies again.
She wants Ukip to be a proper political force.
- James says Ukip must prepare a manifesto to be “battle ready” for an election.
She accuses Theresa May of being “magpie May”, stealing Ukip’s idea, like grammar schools.
- James accuses “magpie [Theresa] May” of stealing Ukip’s policies.
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.
But, she says, the UK’s signature ink is not yet dry on that document.
And until it is, she says, to every single “remainiac”, we are still in, she says.
Britain is still in, she says.
James thanks grassroots supporters.
She says councillors face a huge challenge in 2017.
She will be behind them, she says. She will ensure they get the support they need.
James says Ukip are the “political change” movement
James thanks the media for being here.
That is because Ukip are the political change movement, she says.
- James says Ukip are the “political change” movement.
Diane James's speech
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).
She thanks members and says she is deeply honoured to succeed Nigel Farage.
She has been an MEP for two years, she says. She may not have fought a parliamentary seat, but she has helped in parliamentary campaigns.
She says the first-past-the-post system is flawed.
And “project fear” tactics have had their day, she says.
Diane James elected Ukip leader
The afternoon session has started. Paul Oakden, the current chairman, is announcing the results.
He says 17,917 people voted. Diane James won.
Here are the figures.
Diane James - 8,451
Lisa Duffy - 4,591
Bill Etheridege - 2,052
Philip Broughton - 1,545
Elizabeth Jones - 1,203
In the hall members are now gathering for the announcement of the results of the leadership contest.
Lunchtime summary
- Nigel Farage used this final speech as Ukip leader to set three tests for the government that will show whether Brexit is really being delivered. Claiming that there is already evidence that Theresa May is heading for a “soft” Brexit - he cited what she said at the G20 about the UK getting back just “some” control over immigration - he said Ukip would judge whether Brexit was being delivered by three measures.
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.
He said Ukip were essential to ensuring these things were delivered.
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.
- He said Ukip could win many more votes from Labour.
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.
- He said that, after stepping down as Ukip leader, he would support anti-EU movements in Europe. He might also build up his profile in the US, he said.
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.
- He said Ukip needed to change.
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.
- Paul Nuttall, the Ukip leader, criticised leading figures in the party for feuding, accusing them of creating a “cancer in the heart of the party”. He did not name names, but he suggested all factions had been to blame.
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.
- Nuttall has said Farage must avoid intervening when a new leader takes over.
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.
- He said the party had to unite.
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.
Updated
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.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) September 16, 2016
So Farage quits as leader but will remain leader of UKIP group in EU parliament. That's quite some backseat driver.
— Gaby Hinsliff (@gabyhinsliff) September 16, 2016
Nigel Farage's speech - Verdict
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.
Updated
Farage is getting an adulatory standing ovation.
And now they are giving him three cheers - which is very Ukip.
Farage ends by saying that, now he is no longer constrained by office, he will be free to speak his mind.
Farage says he will help parties in other EU countries campaigning to leave the EU
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.
- Farage says he will help parties in other EU countries campaigning to leave the EU.
He may even return to America, he says.
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.
Farage sets his 3 tests for whether Brexit means Brexit
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.
He says he will judge whether Brexit means Brexit by three measures.
1 - Will the UK get back control of it fishing territorial waters?
2 - Will we be out of the single market?
3 - Will we have British passports again? He is flourishing his EU-style passport.
Farage says he does not think the government will deliver on this.
Farage criticises careerists who have joined Ukip
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.
But now it has to modernise, he says.
He says some people have come into the party who are not motivated by altruism, but who are in it for their own careers.
(That is probably a jibe at Neil Hamilton.)
- Farage criticises careerists who have joined Ukip.
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.
He pays tribue to Steve Crowther. The Lib Dems have more than 100 peers. If Ukip get peers, Crowther should be top of the list, he says.
Farage says Theresa May said Brexit meant Brexit.
But he thinks her views are starting to change, he says.
He says at the G20 May said the Brexit vote meant people wanted “some” controls over immigration. That’s wrong, he says. They want full control.
He says, with Labour in trouble and the Conservatives in a very easy position, the temptation from May will be to go for a “soft” Brexit.
He says Ukip has won the war. But it must win the peace too.
The only way to ensure this “is for Ukip to be healthy and for Ukip to be strong”.
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.
They have also brought down the prime minister, and got rid of the chancellor, and got rid of a European commissioner.
There are cheers after each of those three is listed.
Farage says he predicted an earthquake in British politics. That happened, he says.
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.
Farage says Ukip owed its early success to the introduction of PR for the European elections in 1999
Farage says the advent of PR for the European elections in 1999 made all the difference.
- Farage says Ukip owed its early success to the introduction of PR for the European elections in 1999.
Farage says he was interviewed then. It was his first interview. He was asked if, when he went to Brussels and got invited to all the drinks parties and dinners, he would be corrupted by the lifestyle. “No,” he replied. “I’ve always been like that.”
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.
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.
Then it turned into Ukip. His friends thought he was mad. But it did not matter. To him, it was a matter of principle.
It has finally stopped.
We did it, Farage says. And we could not have done it without you.
They are still clapping.
Farage gets a standing ovation as he takes to the stage.
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.
Nigel Farage's speech
Nigel Farage is about to speak.
Ukip are first showing a “Farage’s greatest hits” video.
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.
He says the media used to replay Farage’s gaffes regulary, “in the belief that that would put people off him.”
It took them some years for them to understand that that is what made people want to vote for him.
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.
Crowther says this would not only be a suicide note for the Lords; it would mark the end of democracy.
But her comments show that Ukip’s claims about the elite obstructing the will of the people are correct, he says.
He says Lady Wheatcroft if Baroness Wheatcroft of Blackheath. Blackheath is where the peasants’ revolt took place, he says. And if Wheatcroft has her way, there will be another peasants’ revolt.
The Daily Mirror’s Dan Bloom has a very jolly picture gallery of the 11 most Ukip things at the Ukip conference.
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.
For five of his six years it worked well, he says.
But in the last year he says it has become dysfunctional.
He says Ukip needs to reform itself, and get “back in order”.
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.
Steve Crowther's speech
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.
But he does have some advice for the party.
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.
And here is the article in full.
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
— Owen Bennett (@owenjbennett) September 16, 2016
Paul Nuttall's speech - Summary
Here are the main points from Paul Nuttall’s speech.
- Nuttall criticised colleagues for infighting and said that, as a result, the party was broken, like “a jigsaw that has been emptied onto the floor.
- He said the new leader had to unite the party and avoid factionalism.
- He said Nigel Farage should resist the urge to interfer when he stands down.
- He said Ukip could replace Labour as the party of the working class.
- He said the party needed new internal structures, but that it would be a mistake not to have an elected national executive.
A very relaxed @paulnuttallukip addresses activists. If he'd stood in the leadership election he'd have walked it pic.twitter.com/jlJ1zRLqrK
— Owen Bennett (@owenjbennett) September 16, 2016
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.
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.
Nuttall says there must be some constitutional reform.
He says he has proposed a new party board.
But it must be democratic, he says.
Do not allow the party to become like the European commission that you have destroyed.
He says there should be a political board for the party, but also a national executive elected by the regions.
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.
He says Ukip’s leading lights have used it “as a football”.
The party resembles a jigsaw that has been emptied onto the floor. The new leader must put it back together.
He says today is a breakwater for the party. It is a changing of the guard.
He and Nigel Farage are standing down.
And standing down must mean standing down. The new leader will not benefit if any of us backseat drive.
He says the new leader must not lead a Faragist Ukip or a Carswellite Ukip. They must lead a Ukip for everyone.
People should not be marginalised for holding alternative views, he says.
He says any party can be judged by how it treats people with different opinions. Ukip must get better at that, he says.
He says the new leader should look outwards, not inwards. Ukip must “focus on fighting Ukip’s enemies and not each other”.
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.
Nuttall says he wants Britain to now forge better relations with Commonwealth countries.
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.
He says any attempt to allow continued free movement for EU citizens “will not be acceptable”.
Paul Nuttall's speech
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”.
And it did so just in time, he says. He says Jean-Claude Juncker has just said the EU is going ahead with plans for a European army. When Nigel Farage said the EU wanted its own army in his TV debates with Nick Clegg in 2014, Clegg said that was a fantasy. What has happened to him?
Nuttall says the UK will “go from strength to strength free from the shackles of our Brussels masters”.
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
— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) September 16, 2016
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.
He says the UK’s negotiating position with the EU is stronger than people realise. If we don’t get a trade deal, we can just leave, he says. After that the EU will be falling over itself to do a deal.
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.
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
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) September 16, 2016
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
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) September 16, 2016
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.)
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.
— Darren McCaffrey (@DMcCaffreySKY) September 16, 2016
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.
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.
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.
I think Nigel eventually just threw his hands up and went ‘Well, what’s the point?’
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.
This points to a grim cycle. The last time Mr Farage resigned, UKIP tumbled. For 11 ignominious months Lord Pearson, a languidly aristocratic former Tory, trashed his party’s prospects: in a television interview shortly before the 2010 election he appeared not even to have read its 14-page manifesto. All of which may now repeat itself. “One quite plausible possibility is we end up with a re-run of the Lord Pearson experience: a year or two of messy and incoherent leadership under a figure not cut out for the big leagues, then Farage comes back,” suggests Robert Ford, a UKIP expert at Manchester University. The fact is that UKIP’s weaknesses point to Mr Farage’s weird genius. Besides the quest for Brexit, his unique schtick was all the party had. Now, again, it may be its only salvation.
Nigel Farage on Ukip's NEC
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.
The new Leader of Ukip should bypass the vanity of such people and make big decisions about Ukip’s future via direct polling of the membership. Yes of course, it brings risk but in a way we get back to the Brexit referendum result. Do you trust the political class or the people? Ukip must trust its members. Whoever wins, if they have the courage to transform the management of our party they will have my wholehearted support.
It says a great about Farage that he views having sandwiches for lunch as a key indicator of someone’s essential worthlessness. Farage, of course, is a champion of the PFL - the “proper fucking lunch”.
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.
Phillips is not the only senior Ukip figure to have defected. Yesterday Steve Stanbury, a former Ukip director, told the BBC’s Daily Politics he had defected to the Tories. He explained:
[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.
Here are some of the other Ukip stories around this morning.
- Nigel Farage has used an interview with Sky News to criticise both Douglas Carswell, Ukip’s only MP, and the archbishop of Canterbury. On the archbishop he said:
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.
And on Carswell he said:
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.
Cllr Duffy, who has won plaudits from Ukip members for taking a tough line on Muslims wearing the veil in public and calling for a ban on Muslim schools, could be on the verge of a shock victory.
- Paul Nuttall, the outgoing deputy Ukip leader, has told the Today programme that the party now faces a problem with supporters defecting to the Tories. As the Telegraph reports, he told the programme:
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.
And here is a picture of Nigel Farage’s socks, taken when Farage was in the European parliament earlier this week, just to prove that Theresa May is not the only politician whose shoes get photographed.
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).
But, organisationally, Ukip is also a total disaster. In fact, it is so riven with hate and feuding that it makes Labour relatively harmonious. The intricacies of who loathes who are not straightforward (BuzzFeed’s Emily Ashton wrote a very good, lengthy analysis a few weeks ago) but essentially it is Farage, the outgoing leader who sought to run the party as a one-man dictatorship versus his enemies, not least those on Ukip’s national executive committee, “among the lowest grade of people I have ever met”, as he describes them.
Farage has had two stints as leader and he resigned for the second time (or the third if you included the 2015 resignation followed by the “unresignation) after the Brexit vote. At today’s conference he will make his outgoing speech as leader before the party announces the result of its leadership contest. The new leader, who is almost certain to be Diane James, the MEP and Eastleigh byelection candidate, will then give a speech before holding a press conference later in the afternoon.
Here are the key timings.
9.45am: The conference opens
10am: William Dartmouth, an MEP and international trade spokesman, speaks.
10.20am: The Ukip peer Lord Stevens speaks.
10.40am: Paul Nuttall, the outgoing deputy leader, speaks.
11.30am: Steve Crowther, the former party chairman speaks.
11.45am: Nigel Farage speaks.
1.30pm: The results of the leadership election are announced, and the new leader speaks.
3.30pm: The new leader holds a press conference.
Here is our conference preview story, by Anushka Asthana.
I’ve just arrived at the conference centre in Bournemouth and I will post a round-up of overnight Ukip conference stories shortly.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on@AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.
Updated
