Let’s catch up with Ukip as it elects its eighth leader since Nigel Farage

If you haven't been paying attention, the last eight years have contained some truly wild moments.

Next month, it will have been eight years since the UK voted to leave the European Union in the Brexit referendum. That momentous result, and the fact the vote was held in the first place, was largely due to the UK Independence Party (Ukip).

David Cameron had promised to give Brits the choice of whether to leave the EU ahead of the 2015 election, in a bid to stop Tory voters backing Ukip instead.

It was an astonishing moment for a party that only ever had two elected MPs in the House of Commons. Its entire raison d’etre had been achieved, just 33 years after it was founded.

But what then?

For Ukip’s leader, the answer was clear. Declaring he had succeeded in his main political ambition with the Brexit result, Nigel Farage stood down. The party was in a ‘pretty good place’, he said, but it was time for someone else to step into his shoes.

‘May the best man or woman win,’ he added. Since then, eight people have led the party – 12 if you also count interim leaders.

On Monday, the latest was elected: TV personality Lois Perry. She joins Diane James, Farage, Paul Nuttall, Steve Crowther (acting), Henry Bolton, Gerard Batten, Piers Wauchope (acting), Richard Braine, Patricia Mountain (acting), Freddy Vachha and Neil Hamilton among leaders since 2016.

If you’re struggling with all those names, I’ve written a little mnemonic verse to help you remember.

Diane led for three weeks then
Nigel Farage back again,
Nuttall, Crowther, Bolton, Batten,
Then Piers Wauchope threw his hat in,
Richard Braine, Patricia Mountain,
Up to nine now if you’re countin’,
Freddy briefly, Neil stepped down,
So Perry wears the Ukip crown.

But that missed out an awful lot of detail and drama. So let’s get into it – what has UKIP been up to since Farage said farewell?

An awkward kiss and Tommy Robinson

The new era did not get off to a great start. The moment Diane James was elected to lead the party on September 16, 2016, her predecessor leaned in for a celebratory kiss.

But according to James, Farage did not aim for the agreed-upon cheek, and this resulted in a toe-curling photograph appearing to show her grimacing as he grabbed her arm.

James lasted just 18 days in the role, telling BBC Five Live she couldn’t ‘continue to bang [her] head against a brick wall’. Her tenure was so short, she did not have time to fill out the relevant Electoral Commission paperwork, so technically Farage had been leader the entire time.

Following a second leadership election in just over two months, Farage was definitely, 100% replaced by his former deputy Paul Nuttall.

Today, he’s largely remembered for a Stewart Lee stand-up routine where the comedian impersonates ‘Paul Nuttalls of Ukips’ (contains one instance of very strong language).

He resigned in June 2017, the day after coming second in a parliamentary by-election. During his campaign for the seat, the media flagged false claims that he had played football professionally for Tranmere Rovers, that he had a PhD, and that a close friend had died in the Hillsborough disaster.

Former party chairman Steve Crowther stepped in on an interim basis for a couple of months, before ex-military man Henry Bolton stepped up to the plate.

Just a few days into 2018, it was revealed Bolton, 54, had left his wife and started a relationship with 25-year-old model Jo Marney. Eyebrows were already raised, but text messages later emerged in which Marney said Prince Harry’s then-fiancée Meghan Markle would ‘taint’ the Royal Family with ‘her seed’ as a ‘black American’.

The controversy didn’t go away after Bolton announced the pair had broken up, and he was removed as leader at a meeting in February.

He was succeeded by Gerard Batten, under whose leadership Ukip lurched further to the right.

He notably appointed EDL co-founder Tommy Robinson as a political advisor and admitted a bunch of well-known online trolls to the party. When one of those trolls told an MP he ‘wouldn’t even rape’ her on Twitter, Batten described his words as ‘satire’.

The leader’s behaviour drove an exodus of high-profile figures including Farage and Nuttall, resulting in perhaps the most catastrophic moment in Ukip’s history: the founding of the Brexit Party.

Competing with Farage

Due to the avalanche of defections, Ukip was already down to just three MEPs before the 2019 European Parliament election. It had 24 after the previous election in 2014 – meaning it lost 21 seats without even a vote.

All three of those seats were lost in 2019, with many voters as well as politicians deciding to migrate to the Brexit Party (later renamed Reform UK).

It may be fair to describe this as the beginning of the party’s ‘wilderness years’. Its numbers in the polls plummeted as Farage’s rival outfit rose sharply. Batten was scrapped as leader and barred from standing again.

This is where we get another rapid-fire series of leaders, with nobody serving longer than three months. Interim leader Piers Wauchope held court until Old Etonian software developer Richard Braine (quiet at the back, he doesn’t go by the name Dick Braine) took on the role in August 2019.

Braine didn’t attend his own party’s annual conference the following month in protest at the treatment of Batten after his ousting. Then, in October, he was suspended when Ukip alleged he was behind a serious data breach – a claim that was later dismissed by a High Court judge. By that point, he’d resigned anyway.

Pat Mountain replaced him temporarily, for a stretch that included a notoriously disastrous Sky News interview with Adam Boulton in which she mentioned Tommy Robinson’s history with ‘other racist parties’ – mistakenly suggesting her own party was racist.

We’re almost finished now.

A longish-term leader emerges

Businessman Freddy Vachha took over in June 2020 after a short period where nobody at all was leader, but he was out the following September when he was suspended ‘pending a formal investigation of a complaint of bullying, harassment, verbal abuse and other conduct likely to bring the party into disrepute’.

Neil Hamilton, an ex-Conservative who resigned his ministerial role in 1994 after being caught up in the cash-for-questions scandal, quickly stepped in to fill the space. He ended up as the longest Ukip leader since Farage, lasting from September 2020 to the beginning of this week. The six non-interim leaders preceding him had lasted an average of 155 days each.

Hamilton, also known for the timeless World Cup anthem he recorded with his wife Christine in 2006, presided over one of Ukip’s bleakest days. At last year’s elections, the party lost every single one of its district and county councillors. That was down from its high point of almost 500 just seven years earlier.

It’s unclear when or why Hamilton decided his time was up, but on Monday he handed the baton over to Lois Perry. A climate denier, she’s appeared as a panellist on Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine Show and occasionally on GB News and TalkTV.

Could she be the one to lead Ukip back to its glory days of almost ten years ago? It’ll take some doing. But at least she can get tips from plenty of other people who’ve been in a similar position.

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