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The UK Independence Party (UKIP, Ukip, /ˈjuːkɪp/ YEW-kip) is a Eurosceptic right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party describes itself in its constitution as a "democratic, libertarian party".

UKIP currently has 11 of the 73 UK seats in the European Parliament following the 2009 elections and subsequent changes. It also has three members in the House of Lords, all the result of defections. The party also has one seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly, due to a defection by former Ulster Unionist Party MLA David McNarry in October 2012. UKIP has not won a seat in the House of Commons to date.

The leader of UKIP, Nigel Farage, was re-elected on 5 November 2010, having first served from 2006 to 2009. Farage has been a UKIP MEP since 1999, and is a founding member of the party.

In the 2009 election to the European Parliament, UKIP obtained 13 seats with 16.5% of the vote, coming second behind the Conservative Party, overtaking the Labour Party in terms of votes, and drawing level with it in terms of seats. In the 2010 general election, the party polled 3.1% of the vote, an increase of 0.9% from the 2005 general election. In the 2011 local elections, UKIP took control of Ramsey town council, and maintained its seven councillors across England, and one in Northern Ireland.

History

This section appears to be slanted towards recent events. Please try to keep recent events in historical perspective and add more content related to non-recent events. (October 2012)

Founding and early years

UKIP was founded in 1993 by Alan Sked and other members of the all-party Anti-Federalist League – a political party set up in November 1991 with the aim of fielding candidates opposed to the Maastricht Treaty.

Its primary objective was withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. The new party attracted some members of the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party, which was split on the European question after the pound was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 and the struggle over ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. UKIP candidates stood in the 1997 general election, but were overshadowed by James Goldsmith's Referendum Party.

After the election, Sked resigned from the leadership and left the party because he felt "they are racist and have been infected by the far-right" and "doomed to remain on the political fringes". However, Goldsmith died soon after the election and the Referendum Party was dissolved, with a resulting influx of new UKIP supporters. The leadership election was won by the millionaire businessman Michael Holmes, and in the 1999 elections to the European Parliament UKIP gained three seats and 7% of the vote. In that election, Nigel Farage (South East England), Jeffrey Titford (East of England), and Michael Holmes (South West England) were elected.

Over the following months there was a power struggle between Holmes, and the party's National Executive Committee (NEC). This was partly due to Holmes making a speech perceived as calling for greater powers for the European Parliament against the European Commission. Ordinary party members forced the resignation of both Holmes and the entire NEC and Jeffrey Titford was subsequently elected leader. Holmes resigned from the party itself in March 2000. There was a legal battle when he tried to continue as an independent MEP until resigning from the European Parliament in December 2002, when he was replaced by Graham Booth, the second candidate on the UKIP list in South West England.

UKIP put up candidates in more than 420 seats in the 2001 general election, attaining 1.5% of the vote and failing to win any representation at Westminster. It also failed to break through in the elections to the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly, despite those elections being held under proportional representation. In 2002, Titford stood down as party leader, but continued to sit as a UKIP MEP. He was replaced as leader by Roger Knapman.

Kilroy Silk and UKIP under Knapman

The 2004 European Elections provided UKIP's first major electoral victory, coming third with winning 12 MEPs elected. In the London Assembly elections the same year, UKIP won two London Assembly seats.

In late 2004, the mainstream UK press speculated on if or when the UKIP MEP, former Labour Party MP and chat-show host Robert Kilroy-Silk would take control of the party. These comments were heightened by Kilroy-Silk's speech at the UKIP party conference in Bristol on 2 October 2004, in which he called for the Conservative Party to be "killed off" following the by-election in Hartlepool, where UKIP finished third (with 10.2%) above the Conservatives in fourth (9.7%).

Interviewed by Channel 4 television, Kilroy-Silk did not deny having ambitions to lead the party, but stressed that Roger Knapman would lead it into the next general election. However, the next day, on Breakfast with Frost, he criticised Knapman's leadership. After further disagreement with the leadership, Kilroy-Silk resigned the UKIP whip in the European Parliament on 27 October 2004. Initially, he remained a member, while seeking a bid for the party leadership. However, this was not successful and he resigned completely from UKIP on 20 January 2005, calling it a "joke". Two weeks later, he founded his own party, Veritas, taking a number of UKIP members, including both of the London Assembly members, with him.

UKIP had hoped to sustain its momentum in the 2005 General Election, but despite fielding 495 candidates, the party failed to achieve a breakthrough as it had in the European elections a year before. UKIP gained 618,000 votes, or 2.3% of the total votes cast in the election, an increase of 220,000 votes / 0.8% from its result in the 2001 general election. This placed it fourth in terms of total votes cast, behind the Liberal Democrats and ahead of the Scottish National Party. However, the party again failed to win any seats at Westminster. 45 UKIP candidates saved their deposits, up from only six in 2001. Its best performance was in Boston & Skegness, where its candidate Richard Horsnell came third with 9.6% of the vote.

Following the 2005 general election, Kilroy-Silk subsequently resigned from Veritas after its performance in the election, having harnessed only 40,000 votes.

2009 European Elections

On 28 March 2009, the Conservative Party's biggest-ever donor, Stuart Wheeler, donated £100,000 to UKIP after criticising David Cameron's stance towards the Lisbon treaty and the European Union. He said, "If they kick me out I will understand. I will be very sorry about it, but it won't alter my stance." The following day, 29 March, he was expelled from the Conservative Party.

On 15 May 2009, a YouGov poll conducted for The Sun newspaper showed UKIP as having 15% of the vote for the impending European Elections, only 5% behind the Labour Party.

The path to the 2010 general election

In September 2009, Nigel Farage announced that he would be resigning as leader of the party in order to stand for Parliament against the Speaker, John Bercow — an imperfectly observed convention states that the main parties do not normally nominate candidates against an incumbent Speaker. Malcolm Pearson, Baron Pearson of Rannoch, Gerard Batten, Nikki Sinclaire, Mike Nattrass and Alan Wood stood for election as leader of the party, and Pearson won.

UKIP fielded 572 candidates in the 2010 general election; its main target seat was Buckingham, Bercow's constituency. UKIP hoped for a hung parliament in which the Liberal Democrats would drive through proportional representation as a key demand to form a coalition government. Lord Pearson asked some prospective candidates to stand down in favour of Eurosceptic Conservative and Labour MPs. However, some refused to do so. This did not stop Lord Pearson from campaigning on behalf of the Conservative candidates stating that he was "putting country before party". These decisions drew some criticism from within the party from the likes of Michael Heaver of Young Independence.

On the morning of polling day, Farage was injured when a passenger in a light aircraft which crashed near Brackley, Northamptonshire.

In the election the party polled 3.1% of the vote (919,471 votes), but took no seats. This made it the party with the largest percentage of the popular vote to win no seats in the election. (In a fully proportional system, 3.1% of 649 seats would be just over 20 seats.)

In UKIP's key target of Buckingham, Farage obtained just 17.4% of the vote – despite Lord Tebbit and numerous senior Conservatives voicing support for him and a Conservative Home online survey putting Farage on 64% and Bercow on 25%. Thus he came third behind Bercow and the independent John Stevens (Buckinghamshire Campaign for Democracy), who had previously resigned from the Conservatives to found the Pro-Euro Conservative Party. UKIP was also third in three other constituencies: North Cornwall, North Devon and Torridge and West Devon. Farage's result was the best of all constituencies that the party contested in that election. The constituency of Boston and Skegness also achieved a large percentage of vote, the party's second best in terms of percentage.

Re-election of Farage

Lord Pearson resigned as leader in August 2010, and Farage was re-elected against Professor Tim Congdon, David Bannerman and Winston McKenzie with more than 60% of the vote. During his acceptance speech, he spoke out against the Coalition government, saying that the Conservative Party's policy on Europe can be summed up as: "Surrender, surrender, surrender."

Lord Pearson welcomed Farage's re-election, saying, "The UKIP crown returns to its rightful owner."

Since the 2010 general election

Stuart Wheeler, who once gave £5 million to the Conservatives, has also joined as the Party Treasurer.

In two by-elections in early 2011, UKIP fared better than predicted, with its candidate Jane Collins coming second in Barnsley Central. Farage welcomed Collins's success and said that UKIP should now aim to replace the Liberal Democrats as the third largest party, saying: "The Lib Dems are no longer the voice of opposition in British politics – we are. Between now and the next general election our aim is to replace them as the third party in British politics."

UKIP fielded 1,217 candidates for the local council elections, a major increase over its previous campaigns, but not enough to qualify for a party election broadcast on television. UKIP said that the party was well-organised in the South East, South West and Eastern regions, but there were still places across the country where there were no UKIP candidates standing at all.

Across the country, many UKIP candidates came second or third. UKIP in Newcastle-under-Lyme gained a total of five seats on Newcastle Borough Council in 2007 and 2008 and three seats on Staffordshire County Council in 2009. Although UKIP did not poll well, it made gains across many parts of England, as well as taking control of Ramsey town council with nine UKIP councillors out of 17. The Chairman of Young Independence, Harry Aldridge, was enthusiastic about the results, saying, "What we have seen in these elections is a raft of enthusiastic first time candidates from YI, from whom we have got some very encouraging results." Whilst UKIP made gains and losses, the party fell short of Farage's predictions of major gains. The UKIP MEP Marta Andreasen called for Farage's resignation as leader of the party.

On 24 May 2011, David Campbell Bannerman, an East of England MEP, defected back to the Conservative Party. This left UKIP with 11 MEPs (and just one for the region) until March 2012.

A day after UKIP's September 2011 conference in Eastbourne, Farage (on Twitter) reported that two Conservative councillors from Rushmoor Borough Council who had attended the conference had defected to UKIP over the government's actions on the Armed Forces and the refusal of a referendum on the European Union. On 10 October, Lord Hesketh defected from the Conservatives to UKIP, something that Farage and the UKIP leadership welcomed with open arms and called the most high-profile Conservative defection to date. In an article in the Daily Mail, he said that he believed that the EU had "betrayed the country's working people" and that he would be an active member of UKIP.

In March 2012 Roger Helmer, an MEP for East Midlands European Parliament constituency, left the Conservative Party and joined UKIP, making UKIP the largest party in the East Midlands European Parliament constituency. This was shortly followed by the defection of Lord Stevens of Ludgate, who also defected from the Conservatives to UKIP, on 17 September,.

On 5 September, a few days before UKIP's annual conference, the party chose Lawrence Webb as its mayoral candidate for the 2012 London mayoral election with a 42% share of the vote. The other nominees were David Coburn, Paul Oakly, Winston McKenzie (who had previously stood for the leadership of UKIP), Michael McGough and Michael Corby.

In October 2012, David McNarry, a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly who had been elected as an Ulster Unionist but was subsequently expelled from the party, joined UKIP, becoming its second representative in Northern Ireland alongside Henry Reilly, a councillor in Newry and Mourne.

On 29 November 2012, UKIP finished in second place in the Rotherham by-election, 2012, with 4,648 votes (21.7% of the votes cast). This was the highest percentage share recorded by UKIP in any parliamentary election (although it had polled a greater number of votes in both the 2012 Corby by-election and in Buckingham in the 2010 General Election, where its candidate was Nigel Farage). Its candidate, Jane Collins, had previously been the only UKIP candidate to come second in any UK parliamentary election at Barnsley Central in 2011. UKIP also came second in the Middlesbrough by-election, 2012 and third in the Croydon North by-election, 2012, both of which were held on the same day as Rotherham.

During 2012, UKIP's popularity in opinion polls increased, with some polls suggesting it had overtaken the Liberal Democrats for third place.

In January 2013, Farage said that UKIP would not go into a coalition after the next general election with Cameron, but would consider doing so with Labour depending on the party's policy on a referendum on EU membership.

In February 2013, MEP Marta Andreasen defected to the Consevatives, criticising Farage's leadership style.

During the Eastleigh By-Election on the 28th February 2013, Diane James from UKIP polled the highest percentage and number of votes ever for a UKIP candidate with 11,571 votes, representing 27.8% of the vote. They finished 2nd behind the Liberal Democrats who retained the seat, putting the Conservatives into 3rd place.

Party leadership

List of Leaders of the party

National Executive Committee

• Executive chairman: Steve Crowther

Ex-officio members

• Party director: Lisa Duffy, Mayor of Ramsey
• Party treasurer: Stuart Wheeler
• Party secretary: Michael Greaves
• General secretary: Jonathan Arnott

Committee Members

• MEP for London: Gerard Batten
• London region: Steven Woolfe
• North West region: Louise Bours
• South East region: Doug Denny
• South West region: Neil Hamilton
• Eastern region: George Curtis
• South West region: Hugh Williams (Deputy Treasurer)
• London region: David Coburn

Policies

Although UKIP's original raison d'être was withdrawal from the European Union it was felt that the public perception of the party as a single-issue party – despite issuing a full manifesto – was damaging electoral progress. Farage, on becoming leader, started a wide-ranging policy review, his stated aim being "the development of the party into broadly standing for traditional conservative and libertarian values".

UKIP proposes cuts in corporation taxes and the abolition of inheritance taxes.

In 2011, the British academics Matthew Goodwin, Robert Ford and David Cutts published a study suggesting that xenophobia and dissatisfaction with mainstream parties are important drivers of support for UKIP, along with Euroscepticism. They concluded that "UKIP is well positioned to recruit a broader and more enduring base of support than the BNP and become a significant vehicle of xenophobia and, more specifically, Islamophobia in modern Britain.

LGBT Issues

In November 2012, David Coburn of UKIP's National Executive Committee clarified the party's policies and positions with regard to LGBT issues. The party fully supports the existing concept of civil partnerships. Coburn stated, "UKIP’s stance on gay marriage is simple: we entirely, wholeheartedly support equal rights for couples regardless of their sexuality and we believe this has been achieved through the introduction of civil partnerships, which UKIP supported." The party is not in support of Government proposals for full same-sex marriage. This is on the basis that such a change in the law could mean that religious faith groups, and places of worship (be it a church, synagogue or mosque, etc.) could be forced to perform a marriage that is incompatible with their religious beliefs.

Coburn had to clarify the party's position on gay adoption in the wake of comments made by a junior member of the party. Winston McKenzie, a former UKIP candidate expressed personal opposition to gay adoption, comparing it to "child abuse" and "a violation of a child's human rights". Farage later asked McKenzie to retract his comments, to which he gave a limited retraction, regreting the term "child abuse". On the issue of gay adoption, Coburn said in a statement to Pink News, "UKIP is a libertarian party, we are categorically not against gay adoption; what we do have a problem with is that Catholic adoption agencies have been banned for opposing gay adoption. The only thing that matters is that the children receive a safe and loving home."

Like most political parties, UKIP has an LGBT wing known as 'Lgbtq* in UKIP'. The group's slogan is "Britain Should be Out and Proud". Its logo is the party's logo in pink mounted on to a circular badge shape form of the traditional LGBT flag as a background.

Representatives

House of Commons

Whilst UKIP has not won a seat in the House of Commons, the party has had representation (albeit for only a relatively short time) when Dr Bob Spink, MP for Castle Point, resigned from the Conservative Party and joined UKIP on 21 April 2008. (In the UK, MPs are not required to resign as MPs if they change their party allegiance.) However, by November 2008, Spink had left UKIP having found himself at odds with party colleagues on various issues. UKIP has no representation in the House of Commons currently.

House of Lords

On 24 June 1995, UKIP gained its first member of the House of Lords in the form of Richard Norton, 8th Baron Grantley, who had joined the party in 1993 from the Conservatives and had recently succeeded to his father's titles. However, with the coming House of Lords Act 1999, he decided not to stand for election as a continuing member, and so left the House in November 1999. Lords Pearson of Rannoch and Willoughby de Broke both defected to UKIP on 7 January 2007, giving the party its first representation in the House of Lords since Lord Grantley's departure. Lord Pearson went on to serve as party leader from November 2009 to September 2010. On 18 September 2012, David Stevens, Baron Stevens of Ludgate joined UKIP, having sat as an Independent Conservative since his expulsion from the Conservatives in 2004.

Northern Ireland Assembly

On 4 October 2012 UKIP gained its first representation in the Northern Ireland Assembly following the defection of David McNarry MLA for Strangford, who had been sitting as an independent, following his suspension from the Ulster Unionist Party.

Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament

UKIP do not currently have any representatives in the other devolved nations of Scotland or Wales. UKIP fielded 29 candidates at the Scottish Parliament election on 5 May. The party also fielded candidates in the Welsh Assembly.

European Parliament

In 1999, three UKIP members were elected to the European Parliament. Together with Eurosceptics from other countries, they formed a grouping called Europe of Democracies and Diversities (EDD).

In 2004, 37 MEPs from the UK, Poland, Denmark and Sweden founded a new European Parliamentary group called Independence and Democracy (ID) from the old EDD group. However, following the European Parliament election, 2009, where Eurosceptic parties from Denmark, Sweden and elsewhere lost all representation, the ID group was dissolved.

UKIP has since formed a new right-wing grouping called Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) comprising nationalist, Eurosceptic, conservative and other political factions. This group is more right wing than the older Independence and Democracy grouping.

UKIP MEP Nikki Sinclaire was expelled from UKIP after resigning from the EFD grouping, citing her displeasure at what she perceived to be racist and extremist parties that belong to the EFD Group. Sinclaire also cited the deterioration of her relationship with Farage, the co-leader of the EFD group.

Sinclaire was subsequently expelled from UKIP for refusing to be part of the EFD group. She later won a sex discrimination claim against her former colleagues, to which UKIP did not lodge a defence, and the ruling went against the party by default.

In February 2013 Marta Andreasen defected from UKIP to the Conservative Party. Two week previously to her defection Andreasen had accused Farage of bullying and being "anti-women" and "a Stalinist". She was UKIP's sole remaining female MEP after the 2009 expolsion of Nikki Sinclaire.

Current MEP representatives

UKIP has 11 MEPs in the European Parliament. Trevor Colman has left the EFD grouping but still stands for UKIP . Roger Helmer was elected as a Conservative MEP but defected to UKIP in March 2012.

Local government

The first UKIP local Councillors in the UK were defectors from the Conservatives when Ellenor Bland was expelled from the Conservative Party by David Cameron in early 2007, for allegedly sending a racist email to other party members. Ellenor Bland and the majority of the Conservative Councillors on the Calne Wiltshire Town Council defected to UKIP. In the subsequent elction in May 2007 the group of defectors failed to be re-elected when standing for UKIP. In the May 2012 local elections, UKIP won a total of 7 seats in England out of 2,414 (no change on the previous year), 2 seats in Wales out of 1,223 (up 1) and no seats in Scotland out of 1,220 (down 1). It failed to win any seats in the London Assembly, coming fifth overall with 4.5% of the vote. In November that year, it failed to win any seats in the England and Wales Police and Crime Commissioner elections.

On 6 May 2011, the party won nine out of the seventeen seats for Ramsey Town Council in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. Before the election, the party had only one seat in the town council. On 12 May, UKIP councillor Lisa Duffy was elected as Mayor. The UKIP group leader for Huntingdonshire District Council said that the town council under UKIP would "be standing up for volunteers and the third sector and will be making grants to them to help the big society develop." The Daily Mail has claimed that UKIP "has made political history after taking control of its first council in the UK".

See also

• Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom
• Bruges Group (eurosceptic thinktank)
• Opinion polling for the next United Kingdom general election

References

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47. retrieved 8 November 2012
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60. "UKIP makes history by taking its first council". Daily Mail. London. 15 May 2011.

External links

• Official website
• UKIP in the European Parliament – UKIP MEPs' website
• Official UKIP local councillors
• UKIP's MEPs explain their aims

• Ill-formatted IPAc-en transclusions
• Use dmy dates from January 2013
• Eurosceptic parties in the United Kingdom
• Libertarian parties in the United Kingdom
• Political parties established in 1993
• United Kingdom Independence Party
• Nationalist parties in the United Kingdom
• 1993 establishments in the United Kingdom
• Conservative parties in the United Kingdom
• Right-wing populism