Diane James is the new leader of Ukip – the first woman in the role.
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Taking to the stage in Bournemouth, the 56-year-old said: “I still haven’t quite come to grips with it”.
“I don’t have the same national profile as Diane, she is in the media and on the television an terrible lot and a big part of any election is the recognition factor”.
“If she starts in a way she means to go on it seems a rather weird way to unite a party”.
As one of four UK Independence Party members of the European Parliament for south east England, she took over the reigns from departing leader Nigel Farage.
Mr Farage admitted today the party had been “breaking down” in recent months and pointed the finger firmly at his party’s own MP.
Mrs James saw off a challenge from local politician and former TK Maxx manager Lisa Duffy, commanding 47.4 per cent of the vote to Mrs Duffy’s 25.7 per cent.
She said that with the Brexit vote, Ukip has “only just won a heat in a 28-member state Olympic competition to leave the European Union”.
Her language skills helped her land a job with a German pharmaceutical company, before she moved into the healthcare sector in the 1980s, studying the USA system.
To applause at the UKIP conference, she said: “Yes to a 100% European Union exit”.
She was appointed UKIP’s deputy chairwoman and home affairs spokeswoman, but stood aside from a planned bid to become an MP in the general election in 2015 for “personal reasons”, after being selected as candidate for North West Hampshire.
The leadership contest, triggered by Farage’s resignation in the summer, brought to public attention a rift within UKIP.
Mr Farage said earlier he was “not going away” but would “support the new leader”. But instead, Neil Hamilton has been axed from the planned list of speakers by the party’s new leader, Diane James.
James said Ukip was “the opposition party in waiting” and called on May to trigger Article 50 – which would kick-off Brexit negotiations – as quickly as possible.
Its right-wing policy agenda on issues like immigration has traditionally taken votes from the Conservative Party, but at last year’s election it made big gains in centre-left Labour’s heartlands among disillusioned working class voters.
Alexandra Phillips, Ukip’s former head of media, told of the bitter splits in the party as she revealed she was joining the Tories.
But in another speech highlighting internal tensions in the party, outgoing deputy leader Paul Nuttall said that “Ukip has not been a happy camp for over a year”, and spoke of “a cancer in the heart of the party”.
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The leadership campaign was thrown into turmoil as soon as it began, with the previous favorite candidate, Steven Woolfe, disqualified for submitting his candidacy 17 minutes after the deadline, citing computer problems.
