Farage tendered his resignation when he lost out in the general election last week, after fighting for a seat in the south east of England. However, on Monday, his party voted to keep him on as party leader.
UKIP's National Executive has rejected my resignation as leader. Please see my Facebook page for the full statement: http://t.co/VTsOFgS3Tw
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) May 11, 2015
As promised @Nigel_Farage tendered his official resignation as leader of UKIP to the NEC. This offer was unanimously rejected by the NEC.
— UKIP (@UKIP) May 11, 2015
UKIP held on to just one of its two seats — both garnered from defecting Tories. In a statement on Monday, UKIP said: "We held our seat in Clacton, and congratulations must go to the re-elected Douglas Carswell MP, and we scored a phenomenal number of second places — 120 all told (none in 2010) — proving that we've become the voice of opposition to the establishment.
"In many constituencies we are now the opposition, on behalf of ordinary people who have been neglected and taken for granted for decades."
UKIP drew support from many Euroscpetics within the Conservative party, unhappy about the shift of power from London to Brussels. Eurosceptic Douglas Carswell resigned from the Conservative party in August 2014, triggering a by-election which saw him re-elected under the UKIP banner with 59.7% of the vote. He stood again, last week, and won his seat, becoming the first-ever UKIP MP to be directly elected at a general election.
Prime Minister finds himself on the back foot on migration matters before he even gets to the starting line for changes to UK membership
— UKIP (@UKIP) May 11, 2015
Another Tory, Mark Reckless, also defected and brought about a by-election in the Kent seat of Rochester and Strood in November 2014. Although he won the vote at the by-election, he lost the seat when he stood for UKIP at the general election.
Nigel Farage, was forced to resign as party leader when he lost his battle to gain a seat in Thanet South, leaving UKIP with just one seat.
UK Election System — "Broken and in Need of Fixing"
However, the party has hit out against the iniquity of the UK first-past-the-post electoral system and the way the constituencies have been drawn up to enable many sitting members of parliament — both Labour and Conservative — to hold on to 'safe seats'.
It's disappointing that the country's outdated voting system means nearly 4 million votes for UKIP translates into a minimal number of seats
— UKIP (@UKIP) May 8, 2015
UKIP moaning about how many seats SNP got vs them, as if we just decided how the voting system works
— Stuart (@StooBews) May 11, 2015
One its website on Monday, the party said:
"The SNP needs just 25,000 votes to gain a seat and with it a disproportionate slice of power in Westminster, whereas over 3.5 million votes only translated to one seat for us."
"Now, more than ever, our electoral system looks broken and in need of fixing. The cause of electoral reform is something we will look to take up on behalf of the millions disenfranchised by the current system."
