Nigel Farage back in ‘rotten’ job as Ukip leader

Nigel Farage was back in charge of the UK Independence Party yesterday after the party's newest leader, Diane James, resigned after just 18 days in office. But Mr Farage said he is only returning to the helm in an interim capacity until a new leader is chosen.

“I’ve done my bit,” he said. “It’s a pretty rotten job being leader of any political party, and I think being leader of Ukip is probably more rotten than all the others.”

Ms James, an MEP for South East England, took party colleagues by surprise with her resignation, which she said was for both professional and personal reasons.

“It is with great regret that I announce that I will not be formalising my recent nomination to become the new leader of the party with the electoral commission,” she said.

“I have been in discussion with party officers about the role. It has become clear that I do not have sufficient authority, nor the support of all my MEP colleagues and party officers, to implement changes I believe necessary and upon which I based my campaign.”

Always a reluctant leader, Ms James is said to have signed her election papers adding the words vi coactus, Latin for "under duress". Already coping with a family illness, she was reported to have been distressed after being spat at on a platform at London's Waterloo Station.

Ukip has struggled to define its role since the June EU referendum, which saw the party's foundational purpose fulfilled. The large number of Labour supporters voting for Brexit persuaded some party strategists that Ukip could become a party of the white working class in Labour's former industrial heartland.

Middle-class leader

Ms James, who is from the southeast of England and unmistakeably middle class, was an unlikely standard-bearer for working-class populism.

Steven Woolf, the first leadership contender to announce on Wednesday, is an MEP for North West England who has gained some prominence as the party's spokesman on migration and financial affairs.

Mr Woolf, who is from a mixed-race, working-class background, has a black American father and a white English mother, as well as Jewish and Irish grandmothers. He was barred from standing in the last leadership contest after submitting his nomination papers 17 minutes late.

“Based on the numbers of emails and telephone calls from members who have asked me to stand again and represent this great party, I have taken that consideration, and discussed it with my family, and yes I will,” Mr Woolf told Sky News on Wednesday.

“I will take on the challenges that Nigel has faced, those within the party that seem to be doing us harm, but also looking forward.”