The millionaire businessman told BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions on Friday night that Mr Farage would not make another comeback as Ukip leader, saying “I can tell you he’s not coming back”.
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On Friday UKIP announces the victor of a leadership contest to replace Nigel Farage, the charismatic but divisive politician who took the party’s once-fringe anti-EU views into the mainstream.
‘I frankly don’t think I could do any more.
“I don’t have the same national profile as Diane, she is in the media and on the television an bad lot and a big part of any election is the recognition factor”.
Diane James will succeed Nigel Farage as the leader of the party.
It polled the third highest number of votes in the 2015 general election after the Conservative and Labour parties.
With a taste for elections, the businesswoman and healthcare consultant stood as an MEP for South East England and won, joining Nigel Farage in the European Parliament. He pledged to help and support Ms James, thought she has said he will not be looked to as a “back seat driver”.
Smiling broadly, he went on: “So I am going to be engaged in political life without leading a political party, and it is going to leave me freer, it’s going to leave me less constrained”.
Diane James has been elected the new leader of the UK Independence Party with almost half of the vote.
“UKIP has not been a happy camp for over a year”, Nuttall said on the first day of UKIP’s annual party conference in Bournemouth.
After declaring to a rapturous crowd of Ukip supporters that we got our country back Farage said: Four years ago, I predicted well cause an quake in British politics.
She heralded the party’s success in delivering Brexit and trumpeted the “disruption we’ve caused”.
A former business analyst with a long career the healthcare sector, Ms James has pledged to ensure the government delivers an exit from the European Union that meets the demands of UKIP voters: namely tighter immigration controls and more free trade.
The new leader insisted she was “not Nigel-like, I am not even Nigel-lite” and would “never ever pretend to be so”.
“It’s not going to be change because I ought to change it when I can’t justify it, it’s going ot be because change is necessary and justified and the caveat and what is behind that will be to provide and make sure we have a winning political machine under my leadership”.
He went onto claim that Ukip had “changed the course of British history” and suggested that the party had “brought down a prime minister” and had “got rid of a chancellor”. She works as the chief of staff to MEP Patrick O’Flynn, who called Mr. Farage “snarling, thin-skinned and aggressive”. I could not have worked any harder or been any more determined.
Lisa Duffy, Bill Etheridge, Elizabeth Jones and Phillip Broughton are all also hoping to take the leadership.
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Farage also pledged to continue to lead Ukip’s MEPs in the European Parliament.
