Farage Bows Out of UKIP after Brexit 'Fairytale'

Nigel Farage on Friday said UKIP had "changed the course of British history" with Brexit as he handed over leadership of the euroskeptic party, which faces an uncertain future without its charismatic figurehead.

Plainspoken Farage, one of the key faces in the campaign that secured Britain's shock decision in June to leave the European Union, quit soon after the referendum saying his lifelong ambition had been accomplished.

Diane James, an MEP, was announced as his replacement at the party's annual conference in the seaside resort of Bournemouth where Farage used his farewell speech to hail the "fairytale" Brexit result.

"Without us there would have been no referendum, without you and the people's army there would have been no ground campaign," he said, as the crowd of mostly older supporters waved Union Jack flags.

"Together we have changed the course of British history," added Farage, who has campaigned for Britain to leave the EU since the early 1990s and has famously clashed with EU leaders as an MEP in the European Parliament -- a role he will retain.

"Nigel Farage will go down as one of the most important politicians of his era," Matthew Goodwin, a University of Kent politics professor and expert on the rise of UKIP, said on Twitter.

James, the party's home affairs spokeswoman and a former pharmaceutical industry executive, is in comparison little known by the wider British public.

A poll by YouGov this month found that just eight percent of respondents knew who she was.

- Brexit for Christmas? -

The new party leader vowed that UKIP would keep up the pressure on the government to deliver on Brexit.

She urged Prime Minister Theresa May to "give UKIP the best Christmas present we could ever have" and invoke Article 50, the formal procedure for an EU exit, before the end of this year.

"Until we get a signature, we're still in, they still tell us what to do," she told party members.

Asked about the legacy of Farage, James said she would not be a "Nigel-like, not even Nigel-lite."

Farage co-founded UKIP in 1993, growing it into Britain's third biggest party by the number of votes cast at last year's general election.

He too said the party would continue pressuring May to go ahead with Brexit, warning UKIP would sweep up discontented voters from both right and left if the government failed to push ahead with the departure.

He said he would remain active in political life -- with plans to travel across Europe and the U.S. to meet similar political movements -- but would not seek to influence James.

- Infighting -

Five candidates ran for the party leadership, with James the bookmakers' overwhelming favorite. 

She takes over a party facing an uncertain future, torn by infighting over its direction after the Brexit vote.

"In the aftermath of the vote for Brexit, the party has become seriously divided between separate factions and might also struggle to sustain public support from social conservatives in the new political landscape," Goodwin told AFP.

The anti-EU party won 12.6 percent of the vote in the 2015 general election, though it only has one MP to show for it under Britain's first-past-the-post system.

The government's new slant under May has also "restricted political space for the populist right," Goodwin said.

Nonetheless, UKIP is hoping to consolidate its post-Brexit popularity by boosting its tally of MPs in the next general election slated for 2020.