Farage's kingdom is falling apart, it's time he abdicated.

If those wishing for a British exit from the EU want to front a decent campaign, they’d better get their act together. Leave it to Nigel Farage, and it’ll be an absolute disaster. Why?
Look no further than his own party, now tearing itself to pieces to see what happens when Farage gets stuck in as leader.

Ordinarily, the consequences of failure as a leader in politics are clear: you push on and let some-one else have a turn. Immediately after the election, 3 leaders resigned: Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, and Nigel Farage.

But a mere 3 days later, Farage was back. There was less a whiff of hypocrisy, and more of a stench.

Nigel Farage had resigned in a very different manner to the others. Whilst Nick Clegg gave a decent, tearful speech extolling the virtues of the Liberalism he believes in, and Ed Miliband humbly took responsibility for Labour’s unexpected drubbing, Farage insisted that he would take some time away and have a holiday, then think about standing again for the leadership elections. Instead, he insisted that the party had virtually begged him to stay, leaving him with little choice.

This, of course, is nonsense: even if they had rejected his resignation, he could have insisted. The truth is, this resignation was a publicity stunt, so that Farage, who failed to win the South Thanet seat, could depict himself as utterly indispensable, and this the second coming of the hero of the hour. Some hero!

Mr Farage promptly got to work as the newly re-instated leader attacking our electoral system, you know, that one we voted to retain in a referendum.

This, of course, is a mistake: if UKIP deserves credit for anything, it’s forcing the Conservatives in to giving us a referendum on EU membership. Attacking a system endorsed by a referendum, therefore, smacks of double standards.

But it is easier to do this, than admit that UKIP failed, and its all-powerful autocrat was to blame.

Firstly, knowing our system favours stability and majority government over strict proportionality, Farage would have done well to portray himself as a king maker, ready to work with the Conservatives in coalition. Back then, kids, coalitions were cool.

Instead, he ruled it out from the very beginning, popping up on Sunday Politics in the week before the election to tell an ever straight-talking Andrew Neil that he wasn’t interested in coalitions, only getting out of Europe.

O really? Why bother writing a manifesto then? Why bother campaigning on a range of issues?

O yes, and talking of that campaign, it was dreadful.

Farage, obviously privately holding an uncompromising wish to reject any coalitions, had cynically calculated that he would do best if his message narrowly appealed to the small segments of the population who might be receptive to it: the white working class (who Labour leadership hopeful Liz Kendall is now crowing on about), who he believed all feel that immigrants and Europe are the cause of all their problems.

Duly, the massive problems facing the NHS were blamed on foreigners with AIDS. Housing shortages were blamed on immigrants. In fact, pretty much everything was.

The nasty campaign continued with an attack on the integrity of the BBC which, though far from perfect, hired independent pollsters to carefully select audiences for the debates. When those audiences did not receive Farage’s populist guff with uncritical, unbridled enthusiasm, Farage simply attacked the audience.

If anyone thinks UKIP is simply made up of a bunch of stupid, ill-informed idiots, however, they would be very wrong indeed, and that’s the problem. They see perfectly that this party has become nothing more than a political machine that has swallowed the belief that without King Farage they cannot survive. They also know that it’s absolute rubbish: the people have spoken, but Farage hasn’t listened.

Instead, according to Patrick O’Flynn, who had directed the party’s campaign, he had become a “snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive” man. O’Flynn described UKIP’s transformation to an “absolute monarchy” and “personality cult.”

Their only MP, Douglas Carswell, apparently turned the air blue at party headquarters when he launched a stinging attack on Farage, following a bitter row over whether to take £3.5M in funds allocated to opposition parties to hire 15 staff. Laughably, Farage’s loyal subjects insisted Carswell was wrong, and stabbing Farage in the back. I think some-one who actually won their seat might have been better positioned to comment, but that’s just me.

If we thought the war was over, we were wrong. Yesterday, UKIP press officers were told in no uncertain terms to cut all ties with former Deputy Chairman Suzanne Evans, who had written the party’s manifesto, with rumours circulating that she is now facing the sack.

With her impressive background as a journalist, founder of a charity and PR consultancy, Farage would do well to listen to Evans, who, instead, is now not to be put forward for any media interviews or briefed on anything. Her crime? Pointing out that not everyone likes Mr Farage.

Evans stated: “I think Nigel is a very divisive character in terms of the way he is perceived. He is not divisive as a person but the way he is perceived in having strong views that divide people.” 

Sources close to Farage claim that he believes this was an attack on him from some-one he tipped to be his successor. I’d have thought it was merely stating the obvious, that when some-one so clearly sets out their views, some people will strongly disagree. Whether this anger is fact or fiction, we don’t know.

What we do know, however, is that separating fact from myth is increasingly difficult with UKIP. People used to talk about their politics. For some, they were populist, xenophobic, even racist. For others, they were what true conservatives used to be. They were gutsy, they said what others were thinking, and they were refreshingly honest about Europe, immigration and the things that matter to people.

Now, however, they are simply a sideshow of intrigue as we pour over the details of King Farage and the power struggles in his personal fiefdom. The people that begged him to stay, who attack Carswell, O’Flynn, Evans and anyone else who has been moderately critical, and who remain faceless and nameless, are the real threat to UKIP’s future.

If the king really wants to save his kingdom, he’ll tell them to pipe down, back off and let him abdicate.