Ukip's only MP joins calls for Farage to step down

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/16/ukips-only-mp-joins-calls-for-farage-to-step-down

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Ukip’s only MP has joined calls from within the party for Nigel Farage to stand down, saying that the leader should “take a break”. Douglas Carswell, who was re-elected as MP for Clacton, said that he did not want to take on the leadership of Ukip but did believe Farage should go.

He praised Farage’s “inspirational” campaign, which helped Ukip to win 3.9m votes at the election, but said that the party should reflect on how it should go forward – without Farage as leader. “Knowing how difficult it is to lead a party makes me admire Nigel Farage all the more,” Carswell wrote in the Times. “On his watch, Ukip has done extraordinarily well. Yet even leaders need to take a break. Nigel needs to take a break now.”

Ukip has descended into bitter infighting since the election. On Thursday the party’s economic spokesman and MEP Patrick O’Flynn described Farage as a “snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive” leader who was turning the party into a personality cult. He urged Farage to fire advisers who, he claimed, were turning the party into an “ultra-aggressive” Tea party-clone. Carswell has also been at loggerheads with Ukip’s hierarchy over his insistence on not claiming all the parliamentary subsidies the party is now entitled to. In response, Farage demanded that an unnamed senior Ukip figure who wants him to quit should leave the party if they cannot back his leadership.

Carswell, who defected from the Conservatives, has now laid out how he thinks Ukip should capitalise on its election gains. He urged the party to reject the temptation of “apeing retro socialism” in a bid to win more former Labour voters in the north of England. Instead, Ukip should look to the internet to galvanise voters and take more care in vetting candidates to weed out cranks, he argued.

In a thinly veiled dig at Farage’s handling of the election debates, Carswell said: “At times, Ukip has failed to strike the right tone. By all means we should highlight the problem of health tourism. But we need to admit that using the example of HIV patients to make the point was ill-advised. Ukip has been at its most persuasive when we have been most optimistic. Anger is never a great way to motivate people – at least, not for very long.”

He also encouraged Ukip supporters to seize the opportunity of the coming EU referendum and make the positive case for leaving, rather than constantly “sniping at the government”.