Farage quits as Ukip leader
By politics.co.uk staff
Nigel Farage has quit as leader of Ukip, just a day after announcing his candidacy against John Bercow in Buckingham.
The South East MEP will inform his party of the decision at its conference in Stockport today, but he has already made the move public, citing the workload of leading both the domestic party and the MEPs.
“I’ve been the leader of the domestic party for the last three years and frankly doing both of those jobs is too much for any one person – the party is far too big,” he told the BBC.
“We’re about to embark on a general election campaign in which we’re going to have over 500 candidates and because of the way UKIP is structured the leader of the domestic party has got to plan, organise, lead and run that domestic general election campaign.
“And I’m not going to take that burden on because frankly it’s too much and anyway I’m going to be busy in Buckingham taking on John Bercow.”
A contest for a new leader will begin next week.
