Rolling coverage of the Ukip conference in Bournemouth, including Nigel Farage’s final speech as leader and the announcement of his replacement
9.18am BST
The United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip) starts its autumn conference in Bournemouth today. Its supporters would claim that it is the most successful party in the history of British politics. Its detractors would claim that it is one of the most shambolic and useless. Both descriptions are reasonably accurate.
Ukip has only won one national election (the European elections in 2014) and it only has one MP, but if you judge a party by whether it has achieved its key objective, then Ukip’s record is hard to fault. Just over 20 years after it was founded, it got exactly what it wanted: a referendum on EU membership, and a vote to leave. No other party can make this boast. There is an argument to be had about quite how important a part Ukip played in the EU referendum campaign itself. (Douglas Carswell, Ukip’s only MP, told the Guardian at the weekend that leave only won because Vote Leave ignored the approach favoured by Ukip’s leader Nigel Farage.) But Ukip was decisive in ensuring that the referendum was held in the first place. David Cameron has a hearty dislike for Farage and Ukip, and he conceded a referendum because he was under pressure to do so from Tory MPs, but those Tories had leverage because the Ukip started soaring after the 2010 general election and Cameron concluded that, without offering a referendum, the Conservative party could not win in 2015 (and/or he could not survive as leader).
Related: Nigel Farage aide defects to Tories claiming a mass exodus from Ukip
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Sig Nordal 