Earlier on Saturday, Ms James had appeared on the conference stage with her party’s only MP, Douglas Carswell, saying it was her “absolute pleasure” to welcome him to the platform.
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“We could have had half a dozen to a dozen members of Parliament if we had got the six-month strategy in the run-up to the general election right”.
The clear reference to the viral campaign slogan of Donald Trump’s campaign to take the United States presidency – “Make America Great Again” – has been adopted by a number of other political movements worldwide and adjusted for local use.
He said he would remain active in political life, with plans to travel across Europe to meet similar political movements, but would not seek to influence the new UKIP leader.
On his new regular LBC show, Mr Farage told listeners he “kept my underpants on”.
Farage later revealed “it had seemed an “amazingly good idea” to go for the midnight splash but insisted it ‘wasn’t skinny-dipping”.
Ms James laughed, and said: “I can’t think of any at the moment, apart from Mrs Thatcher, maybe”. But James said that the Conservative party was too divided to truly deliver on that promise.
Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Neil today, Mrs. James laid out what she thought of as the direction for UKIP, as she attempted to set out her ambition to make it the main opposition in United Kingdom politics.
The leader of Ukip’s Welsh Assembly group, who Mr Farage has been fiercely critical of, was replaced by a 10-minute coffee break and a five-minute speech by Nathan Gill, the man he ousted.
Mr Farage said “some quite big surgery” was needed to get Ukip back into shape.
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“We have to keep reminding people that the elected government is not committed to Brexit and we are”, she said.
