Nigel
Farage’s Resignation Speech
8 May 2015
[The definition of whether you’re
having a good day or a bad day – and many of you may think I’m having a bad day
– but let me tell you, five years ago on election day I was in intensive care
after an aeroplane crash so compared to that this feels pretty damn good.
I do congratulate the Prime
Minister – he has secured a Tory majority, something nobody thought was
possible. Now, there was an earthquake this election, and it happened north of
the border – it happened in Scotland.
I think what you saw were a lot
of voters so scared by that Labour-SNP coalition that they drifted towards the
Conservatives and that included some of the people here who had voted UKIP last time around.
But I saw another shift at this
election: I saw UKIP, the party apparently for the retired old colonels
suddenly as the party for people under 30: particularly young working women.
There is a big change going on in
politics and I think what is really interesting is that we’ve always been here
to believe that Britain gets back its democracy, we shouldn’t be governed from
Brussels.
But what is interesting is what’s
happening within our democracy in this country. We’ve got a party in Britain
who got 50% the vote in one of the regions and nearly 100% of the seats and we’ve
got another party that scored nearly as many votes, 4 million, as well as the
European elections last year, that has finished up with one seat in parliament
and I think the time has come for real, genuine, radical political reform and I
think it’s UKIP that’ll be the party that leads it.
On a professional level I express
today a degree of disappointment, on a personal level I believe an enormous
weight has been lifted from my shoulders and I’ve never felt happier.]
But I have seen a shift in our
vote and I saw it in Broadstairs, I saw people saying ‘Nigel, we’re going to
vote for you in the local elections, we love what you stand for, we agree with
you, but we can’t afford to have a Labour-SNP coalition’.
So I think some of those older
voters who’d been voting UKIP for the last couple of years did vote
Conservative yesterday and yet that vote was supplemented, augmented, replaced
by a different kind of voter.
And the new UKIP voter is
predominantly working class, very much younger than ever was before, and I
would characterise our strength in this constituency and it’s been seen all over
the country – young working couples and in particular young women now voting UKIP.
And they’re looking for change,
they’re the kind of people who feel they work hard, do their best, pay for
childcare but are frankly little better off than those that don’t work and that
is a big social problem within this country. Personally, I think the First Past
The Post system is bankrupt. It’s bankrupt because one party can get 50% of the
vote in Scotland and nearly 100% of the seats, and our party can get 4 million
votes and just one seat.
I think for those reasons there’ll
be a lot of angry UKIP people up there – but not giving up on UKIP but
absolutely determined that we get a fairer, more reflective system. But there’s
something deeper about this First Past The Post system.
What it’s led to is a general
election in which because the system that was designed to produce majority
government couldn’t do it has led to a totally negative general election
campaign. Everybody says ‘look at these guys, they’re slightly worse than us’
and my feeling is: if we have a proportional system, actually you’d say ‘please
vote for me because every single vote counts and this is what we stand for’.
So I think electoral reform
wouldn’t just make our politics fairer, I think it would make it more open,
more honest, and we’d see some real, real debate.
Now, I said, as this campaign
went on that if I didn’t win I would stand down as leader of UKIP. And I know
that you in the media are used to party leaders making endless promises that
they don’t actually keep, but I’m a man of my word, I don’t break my word, so I
shall be writing to the UKIP national executive in a few minutes, saying that I
am standing down as leader of UKIP. And I will recommend that pro-temp they put
in place as acting leader Suzanne Evans, who I think has emerged from this
campaign as an absolute tower of strength within UKIP.
She works in London, she’s based
in the London office and I think that’s the right way for us to go. As far as I’m
concerned personally well, yes, there’s a bit of me that’s disappointed, but
there’s a bit of me this morning that’s happier than I’ve felt for many years.
There hasn’t been a single
[inaudible] since 1994 that’s not been dominated by UKIP. I’ve tried to mix
that with family, I’ve tried for nine years to mix it with running my own
business, and it really has been seven days a week, totally unrelenting and
occasionally let down by people who perhaps haven’t always said and done the
right things.
So I feel a huge weight has been
lifted off my shoulders.
I haven’t had a fortnight’s
holiday since October 1993, I intend to take the summer off, enjoy myself a
little bit, not do very much politics at all.
There will be a leadership
election for the next leader of UKIP in September and I will consider over the
course of this summer whether to put my name forward to do that job again.
One thing I’m absolutely certain
of is there are opportunities coming up electorally – I look at the Welsh
Assembly elections next year, the Scottish Parliament the year after, the
London Assembly elections, goodness knows what by-elections may come – and I
think those 4 million people out there are pretty loyal. They’re voting for us,
not because they think we’re slightly less worse than somebody else, they’re
voting for us because they believe in us.
I think the next chapter of UKIP
has begun. I want us to reform our membership model. I want to make this a
party that you can join for £10 and not £30. I want us to recognise the huge
success we’ve had in this campaign on social media and work even harder on that.
And I think you’ll see a younger, more vibrant, energetic UKIP, campaigning not
just to get our country back from Brussels, not just to control immigration
sensibly with the Australian-style points system, but one that actually wants
to see a fairer society that helps those who are out there working hard and
trying their best to have a better life, and an electoral system that actually
engages people and gets people thinking that when they vote, they might just
get a Government and a Parliament that is representative of their views. Thank
you. |
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