The UK Independence Party, better known as UKIP, is a far-right party that played a leading role in pushing for the UK to leave the European Union. Founded in 1993 as a single-issue Eurosceptic campaign group, the party began to perform well in local and national elections under the leadership of Nigel Farage, and it was UKIP’s growing popularity in the years leading up to the 2015 general election that prompted then-Prime Minister David Cameron to promise a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU if given another term.

However, the party has since faced a catastrophic fall in fortunes, with its vote share and income dwindling to the point of oblivion. It faced relentless infighting and ten changes of leadership between the resignation of Nigel Farage in 2016 and the election of leader Neil Hamilton in 2021. In January last year, Hamilton stepped down and Lois Perry, a climate sceptic campaigner, briefly took over. She resigned after 34 days, citing a bad case of pneumonia (and has since re-emerged as director of the British offshoot of the Heritage Foundation, an American climate denial pressure group).

Nicholas Tenconi, the head of Turning Point UK, is now UKIP’s leader. In a podcast in January 2025, he admitted being sentenced for a fight outside a nightclub. A media report from his 2011 court case mentions Tenconi punched a victim in an apparent drunken argument over a cigarette, which led to the victim being kicked on the ground. Tenconi avoided jail and was fined and ordered to complete 240 hours of unpaid work. “My debt to society is paid,” Tenconi told a podcaster.

UKIP entered 24 candidates at the general election, almost half the 43 it put up in 2019. They included Voice of Wales‘s co-founder Stan Robinson, who has previously called for a journalist to be castrated with a “rusty blade”. All but one lost their deposits. UKIP also performed badly in the local elections, putting forward just 16 candidates, including the conspiracy theorist Leo Robinson, who has told his followers to prepare for war with “death jab agents”.