Speaking to a scrum of reporters in London, Farage said he’d only returned to UKIP to campaign for Britons to vote to leave the European Union.
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MEP Paul Nuttall, who is seen as one of the favourites to replace outgoing leader Nigel Farage, insisted the party needs to come together to take advantage of the internal strife rocking Labour.
Farage led the UKIP party from 2006 to 2009 and returned the role after the 2010 general election in the U.K. He resigned from the party after the 2015 election, only to return to the role days later to help lead the Brexit campaign.
“And so I feel it’s right that I should now stand aside as leader of UKIP”.
Mr Arnott said it was not a case that Mr Farage was now stepping back because of the hard situation created by the outcome of the referendum.
“You have to put in in order to be able to get a return, and I’m not hinting at Brexit, but I have to say it comes to mind”.
Mishcon de Reya, a London-based law firm, said the decision to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty for Britain’s exit from the European Union rests with representatives of the people under the Constitution.
Suzanne Evans, UKIP’s parliamentary spokeswoman who’s suspended for criticizing the party, told Sky News she would like to stand in for Farage. This would not happen this time, he said. “That I couldn’t possible achieve more than we managed to get in that referendum”.
When asked about Mr Farage’s often-criticised rhetoric on immigration, Mr Carswell said: “We went too far, and I criticised it when we went too far. and it’s not just morally wrong, it’s electorally disastrous. What I’m saying today is: I want my life back”. “Letting go of that is not an easy thing to do but I think right now it’s the right thing to do”.
Despite having only one MP in the parliament, UKIP became a force in British politics during his leadership. But UKIP’s anti-establishment messages resonated with large numbers of voters, and pressure from UKIP and the Euroskeptics in the Conservative Party led Cameron to promise a referendum on Britain’s European Union membership.
“I have never been, and I’ve never wanted to be a career politician”.
Farage said whoever was next chosen to lead the country should be a “Brexit prime minister”.
Douglas Carswell – the party’s only MP in Westminster – has already ruled himself out of the race after telling the BBC the chances of him going for the job were “somewhere between nil and zero”.
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Ms Evans, the party’s parliamentary spokeswoman, is now suspended from the party for public criticisms she made of it.
