Within an hour of her leadership victory, Ms James took the decision to wipe Neil Hamilton from the conference agenda.
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In return, Mr Carswell pledged his “110 per cent” support for the new leader. Under Farage the party moved from fringe player to a political force capable of winning millions of votes and swaying public opinion.
“Invoke article 50 and give Ukip the best Christmas present”, James said. The party is “handicapped by a flawed, morally bankrupt first-past-the-post [electoral] system”, James said.
“Is he going to go on sniping from the sidelines?”, he said. “I think it’s extraordinary that the speaker of the Ukip group in the Assembly should be replaced as the speaker by someone who’s just resigned in the assembly”.
In a show of unity at Ukip’s annual conference in Bournemouth, the Clacton MP was welcomed on stage by the party’s new leader Diane James.
Mr Farage said he did not want to “damn” any of the contenders with his support and acknowledged they would find it tough to take over from him.
He told members: “We must now all rally behind Diane”.
The competition has been dominated by factional infighting after immigration spokesman Steven Woolfe MEP – a long-time Farage supporter – was excluded from the race on a technicality by the National Executive Committee (NEC), which has been observed to be dominated by an anti-Farage faction of the party.
The governing center-right Conservative Party, under its new leader May, “now appears committed to delivering Brexit while also offering policies that have always been advocated by UKIP”, such as introducing more selective schools, said Goodwin.
She challenged new United Kingdom prime minister Theresa May – referred to as “Magpie May” – to invoke Article 50 and accused her of stealing her party’s ideas for government policy.
Nigel Farage has just delivered his speech at Ukip conference, in which he declared that he had put “absolutely all of me” into Britain leaving the EU.
James also accused “magpie May”, who is seen as more right-wing than her predecessor, David Cameron, of “stealing” UKIP policy ideas in education, defence and other fields.
Mr Farage also stood down briefly as leader in 2009, but was re-elected the following year.
She works as the chief of staff to MEP Patrick O’Flynn, who called Mr. Farage “snarling, thin-skinned and aggressive”.
Mr Farage, who last month appeared on stage with Donald Trump at a campaign rally for the Republican presidential candidate in MS, added: “Who knows, I may even go back to the United States of America at some point”.
But she sought to dispel criticisms that she would serve as a continuity candidate under Farage’s influence: “I am not Nigel like, I am not even Nigel-lite”, she said, “but I will be doing everything to achieve the political success that he’s handing over to me and to you”.
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“Ukip does have to make some fundamental changes, some quite big surgery is needed”.
