75 Facts About UKIP

UKIP originated as the Anti-Federalist League, a single-issue Eurosceptic party established in London by Alan Sked in 1991.

UKIP subsequently saw its vote share and membership heavily decline, losing almost all of its elected representatives amid much internal instability and a drift toward a far-right, anti-Islam message.

Ideologically positioned on the right-wing of British politics, UKIP is characterised by political scientists as a right-wing populist party.

UKIP has placed emphasis on lowering immigration, rejecting multiculturalism, and opposing what it calls the "Islamification" of Britain.

UKIP has faced a critical reception from mainstream political parties, much of the media, and anti-fascist groups.

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UKIP began as the Anti-Federalist League, a Eurosceptic political party established in 1991 by the historian Alan Sked.

UKIP was beaten by the Referendum Party in 163 of the 165 seats in which they stood against each other.

In 2002, the former Conservative MP Roger Knapman was elected UKIP leader, bringing with him the experience of mainstream politics that the party had lacked.

In 2004, UKIP reorganised itself nationally as a private company limited by guarantee.

UKIP's support increased during the 2004 European Parliament elections, when it placed third, securing 2.

Kilroy-Silk then criticised Knapman's leadership, arguing that UKIP should stand against Conservative candidates, regardless of whether they were Eurosceptic or not.

UKIP continued to be widely seen as a single-issue party and in the 2005 general election—when it fielded 496 candidates—it secured only 2.

Cameron was highly critical of UKIP, referring to them as "fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists".

UKIP gained its first MP when Conservative defector Douglas Carswell won the seat of Clacton during an October 2014 by-election.

UKIP had won control of its first UK council, in Thanet, in May 2015; it took overall control from Labour and increased its seats on the council from two to 33.

In January 2018, UKIP's NEC delivered a vote of no confidence in Bolton; only Bolton voted against the motion.

UKIP was replaced by Gerard Batten as interim leader until a new leadership election could be held.

MEP James Carver left UKIP to sit as an independent on 28 May 2018, becoming the sixth UKIP MEP to leave since 2014.

Farage announced his decision to resign in December 2018, calling Batten "obsessed" with Islam and saying that "UKIP wasn't founded to be a party based on fighting a religious crusade".

On 9 December 2018, before an important vote on Brexit legislation, UKIP led a "Brexit Betrayal" rally in central London fronted by Robinson, alongside prominent far-right groups.

Candidates selected by UKIP to run in the election included right-wing YouTube personalities, Carl Benjamin and Mark Meechan.

In October 2019, UKIP underwent a leadership crisis in the run-up to its NEC elections after it suspended Braine's membership, and by extension, his eligibility to be party leader, over allegations of data theft from party databases.

UKIP stated that he wanted to support Boris Johnson's Brexit deal.

Only 44 UKIP candidates stood in the December 2019 general election, targeting constituencies that voted to leave the European Union in which the Brexit Party withdrew their candidates for the Conservatives or where the Conservative candidate was in favour of remaining in the EU.

On 2 December 2019, Mountain appeared on Sky News for an interview with journalist Adam Boulton as a part of the launch of the election manifesto for UKIP; it lasted for eight minutes and the interview was described by the Evening Standard as a "car crash", and there were reports that she was mistaken for the titular character of Catherine Tate's Nan.

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In January 2020, David Kurten, UKIP's last remaining London Assembly Member, left UKIP to stand as an independent candidate in the 2020 London Assembly election and the 2020 London mayoral election.

UKIP stated that the party "went astray quite a few years ago" and that under his leadership it would "return to our libertarian freedom-loving principles".

UKIP is situated on the right wing of the left–right political spectrum.

At the time, its "ideological heritage" lay within the right-wing of the Conservative Party, and UKIP was influenced by the "Tory populism" of Conservative politicians Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell.

UKIP uses recurring populist rhetoric—for instance by describing its policies as "common sense" and "straight talking"—in order to present itself as a straightforward alternative to the mainstream parties and their supposedly elusive and complex discourse.

UKIP has always had the politics of national identity at its core.

UKIP considers itself to be a British unionist party, although its support base is centred largely in England.

UKIP has emphasised the need to correct what it perceives as the United Kingdom's imbalance against England resulting from the "West Lothian question" and the Barnett formula.

UKIP emphasises Euroscepticism to a far greater extent than any of Western Europe's other main radical right parties, and it was only post-2010 that it began seriously articulating other issues.

UKIP advocated leaving the European Union, stopping payments to the EU, and withdrawing from EU treaties, while maintaining trading ties with other European countries.

UKIP eventually committed to a referendum in their 2015 manifesto.

In contrast to involvement in the EU, UKIP has emphasised the UK's global connections, in particularly to member states of the Commonwealth of Nations.

UKIP rejected the description that they were "Europhobes", maintaining that its stance was anti-EU, not anti-European.

UKIP has placed great emphasis on the issue of immigration to the UK, and in 2013 Farage described it as "the biggest single issue facing this party".

UKIP calls for all immigrants to require compulsory health insurance, and proposes that migrants be barred from claiming any state benefits until they had been resident in the UK for at least five years.

UKIP gained traction from the fact that post-2008, immigration had come to the forefront of many Britons' minds as a result of increased EU migration and its concomitant social changes.

In 2018, UKIP pledged to work with anti-EU populist group The Movement.

UKIP would allow businesses to favour British workers over migrants, and would repeal "much of" Britain's racial discrimination law, which was described as "shocking" by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government and viewed as discriminatory by others.

UKIP opposed the introduction of same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom.

UKIP wants to repeal the Human Rights Act, and remove Britain from both the European Convention on Refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights .

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Critics of UKIP have claimed that the party's real desire is to dismantle and privatise the NHS, a claim bolstered by the publication of leaked documents showing that in 2013 the UKIP NEC privately spoke positively of NHS privatisation.

UKIP is the only major political party in the United Kingdom that does not endorse renewable energy and lower carbon emissions, and its media output regularly promotes climate change denial.

Farage and other senior UKIP figures have repeatedly spoken out against the construction of wind farms, deeming them a blot on the rural landscape.

UKIP has announced that it would repeal the Climate Change Act 2008 and has placed an emphasis on protecting the Green Belt.

UKIP would introduce an option for students to take an apprenticeship qualification instead of four non-core GCSEs which can be continued at A Level.

In 2008, Usherwood noted that UKIP relied heavily on a small number of major financial backers.

UKIP was then expelled from the Conservatives and in 2011 appointed treasurer of UKIP.

In January 2015, UKIP membership was the fifth highest of British parties.

UKIP's voters are not single-issue Europhobes or political protesters, they share a clear and distinct agenda, mixing deep Euroscepticism with clear ideas about immigration, national identity and the way British society is changing.

Conversely, an earlier study by Richard Whitaker and Philip Lynch, based on polling data from YouGov, concluded that UKIP voters were distinct from those of far-right parties.

UKIP has been most successful along England's eastern and southern coasts, in parts of south-west England, and in the Labour heartlands of Northern England and Wales.

Conversely, a March 2015 Ipsos Mori poll found among 18- to 34-year-olds UKIP was polling nearly as well as the Green Party, somewhat contradicting the idea that Farage lacked appeal for younger voters.

UKIP's organisation is divided into twelve regions: London, South East, South West, Eastern, East Midlands, West Midlands, Yorkshire, North East, North West, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland.

The national party and UKIP Scotland focused on supporting the candidates for the 2014 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom.

Further, the system encouraged tactical voting, with many UKIP supporters believing that a vote for the party would be a wasted vote.

On 24 June 1995, UKIP gained its first member of the House of Lords, The Lord Grantley, who had joined the party in 1993 from the Conservatives and had recently succeeded to his father's titles.

On 18 September 2012, The Lord Stevens of Ludgate joined UKIP, having sat as an Independent Conservative since his expulsion from the Conservatives in 2004.

UKIP competes electorally in all four parts of the United Kingdom.

In October 2012, UKIP gained its first representation in a devolved Assembly the Northern Ireland Assembly in David McNarry, MLA for Strangford, who had left the Ulster Unionist Party.

UKIP's support has been particularly weak in Scotland, where it has no representatives in the devolved parliament.

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UKIP fielded candidates at the Scottish Parliament election on 5 May 2011, when its platform included a commitment to keep the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, while replacing the separately-elected Members of the Scottish Parliament with the Members of the House of Commons elected in Scotland.

UKIP ceased to have a formal Welsh Assembly group after David Rowlands resigned in May 2019 to form a new Brexit Party group with Reckless, Jones and Mandy Jones .

UKIP were left without any Senedd members after the 2021 Senedd election.

At the 2013 and 2014 local elections, UKIP made significant gains to become the fourth largest party in terms of councillors in England, and fifth largest in the UK, with over 300 seats .

UKIP later took back control as a majority after winning the 2016 Northwood ward by-election, taking its number of councillors up to 29.

In December 2014 UKIP co-founded the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe, a European political party whose membership is composed of several member parties of the EFDD parliamentary group.

UKIP had no members in the European Parliament following the 2019 EU election.

Twenty-four UKIP representatives were elected in the 2014 election, but twenty subsequently defected, one was expelled and three lost their seats in the 2019 election.

In November 2018, Patrick O'Flynn resigned to join the Social Democratic Party in protest over UKIP's move to the "hard right", and Louise Bours became an independent MEP.

Many on Britain's centre-left have been reluctant to accept that UKIP was hindering public support for Labour, instead believing that they were primarily a problem for the Conservatives and would thus help produce a Labour victory.