UKIP
05-09-2009, 12:38 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8237728.stm
As he puffed on his pipe outside his party's conference hotel on Thursday evening, Nigel Farage made a decision.
With a general election just months away, he would stand down as the leader of the UK Independence Party. It was a move he had been considering for some time, but one that few of his party's supporters would have predicted.
Having announced earlier that day that he planned to take on House of Commons Speaker John Bercow at the general election, he had decided he wanted to devote all of his energy to that fight. In his closing speech to the party conference in Southport, on Friday, he said it was "important for UKIP to get a voice at Westminster".
But he was also frank about his reasons for stepping down, saying he feared that with his duties as group leader in Brussels, planning a general election campaign as leader of the domestic party in the UK and campaigning to become an MP, "I may just have bitten off more than I can chew". And he joked: "It is simply not possible for one human being - however hard working and talented - it is simply not humanly possible, in a party growing as fast as this one, to be leader of both."
UKIP is the fourth largest party and came second in the European Parliament Elections, beating Labour into third place. They campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union which creates over 75% of our laws.
He is standing against John Bercow (the Commons speaker) who Labour & the Liberal Democrats refuse to stand against because its common practice for the speaker to be neutral. Bercow was contraversial choice as speaker as he himself was involved in the expenses scandel.
Good luck to him, I think UKIP might actually pick up some seats at the next General Election.
As he puffed on his pipe outside his party's conference hotel on Thursday evening, Nigel Farage made a decision.
With a general election just months away, he would stand down as the leader of the UK Independence Party. It was a move he had been considering for some time, but one that few of his party's supporters would have predicted.
Having announced earlier that day that he planned to take on House of Commons Speaker John Bercow at the general election, he had decided he wanted to devote all of his energy to that fight. In his closing speech to the party conference in Southport, on Friday, he said it was "important for UKIP to get a voice at Westminster".
But he was also frank about his reasons for stepping down, saying he feared that with his duties as group leader in Brussels, planning a general election campaign as leader of the domestic party in the UK and campaigning to become an MP, "I may just have bitten off more than I can chew". And he joked: "It is simply not possible for one human being - however hard working and talented - it is simply not humanly possible, in a party growing as fast as this one, to be leader of both."
UKIP is the fourth largest party and came second in the European Parliament Elections, beating Labour into third place. They campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union which creates over 75% of our laws.
He is standing against John Bercow (the Commons speaker) who Labour & the Liberal Democrats refuse to stand against because its common practice for the speaker to be neutral. Bercow was contraversial choice as speaker as he himself was involved in the expenses scandel.
Good luck to him, I think UKIP might actually pick up some seats at the next General Election.