Ukip’s only MP has put on a public show of unity with his leader to herald a new era after epic fights with Nigel Farage.
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Farage gave three examples of what Theresa May needs to do to ensure her frequent promise that Brexit means Brexit.
Ms James insisted she was a “new leaf, new book, new era” and dismissed suggestions the outgoing leader would be a backseat driver. Is he going to support Diane James, is he going to support the party’s aims? She won 8,451 votes out of 17,917, while Lisa Duffy came second with 4,591.
James took her election on Friday as an opportunity to slam the “flawed, morally bankrupt” electoral system, which is often criticized as unfair by smaller parties and independents.
Divisions in the party were exposed late on Friday afternoon after it emerged that its assembly leader, Neil Hamilton, had been dropped from the agenda.
She was announced as the new leader at the party’s annual conference, in Bournemouth. James told journalists that she would be happy to meet Hamilton if her diary matched with his.
He said he has given UKIP “absolutely all of me” as he revealed plans to tour Europe to foster Brexit-style “independence movements” now that he has stepped down as party leader. Obviously the party have to stop warfare and reunite behind her.
“We are going to confound our critics, we are going to outwit our opponents, we are going to build on our election success that we have achieved to date and do more”, James told delegates at UKIP’s fall conference in Bournemouth on England’s south coast.
The party gained notoriety in the last four years as anti-Europe sentiment crept in to the UK’s political atmosphere, and the culmination was the Leave vote which triumphed in the historic referendum.
He said: I wish them the very best of luck and my job is not to meddle.
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”.
“I hope to be engaged in political life without leading a political party”, he said, adding that he would be less constrained.
She added: “She has written some good stuff for her campaign and she has been with the party that she has built up from the time that she stood for the Eastleigh by-election… that’s when UKIP started to get noticed because she did so well in that”. “That would make good TV wouldn’t it!”
Just yesterday, Mr Carswell said Mr Farage had “never forgiven” him for defecting to Ukip and then winning his Clacton seat twice – prompting Mr Farage to claim he had no idea whether Mr Carswell supported any Ukip policies.
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“If she starts in a way she means to go on it seems a rather weird way to unite a party”.
