title: UK Independence Party

text: In 2017, Henry Bolton, a former soldier, was elected leader. In January 2018, UKIP MEP Jonathan Arnott resigned from the party. In December 2017, former UKIP Suffolk County Council member and parliamentary candidate from the general election in Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, Stephen Searle, murdered his wife Anne Searle at their home in Stowmarket. In January 2018, UKIP's NEC delivered a vote of no confidence in Bolton; only Bolton voted against the motion. He nevertheless refused to resign. In protest, Margot Parker resigned as deputy leader, as did the party's spokesmen for government, education, immigration, and trade and industry. A few days later, all seventeen UKIP members of Thurrock Council left the party and formed Thurrock Independents. In February, UKIP members passed a vote of no confidence in Bolton, removing him as leader. He was replaced by Gerard Batten as interim leader until a new leadership election could be held. When the election occurred in April, Batten stood unopposed and was elected.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In the 2018 local elections UKIP lost 124 of the 126 seats it was defending, and gained a single seat in Derby for a net loss of 123. MEP James Carver left UKIP to sit as an independent on 28 May 2018, becoming the sixth UKIP MEP to leave since 2014.


title: UK Independence Party

text: Under the leadership of Henry Bolton, party membership was understood to have fallen to around 18,000 by January 2018. During Batten's interim leadership term, the party avoided insolvency after a financial appeal to members. As the new permanent leader, Batten focused the party more on opposing Islam, which he described as a "death cult", was criticised as an "explicitly far-right party" after they invited Paul Joseph Watson as a spokesman, sought closer relations with the far-right activist Tommy Robinson and his followers, and made Muslim-only prisons party policy (which was criticised as "the first step to Muslim concentration camps"). The party saw its membership rise by 15% in July 2018, following the publication of the Chequers Agreement and allowing three prominent far-right activists to join the party. Previous leader Nigel Farage stated he was "really upset" that Robinson could be allowed into the party and that he believed Gerard Batten was marginalising the party.


title: UK Independence Party

text: Batten's appointment of Robinson as an advisor was followed by a wave of high-profile resignations from the party. Farage announced his decision to resign in December 2018, calling Batten "obsessed" with Islam and saying that "UKIP wasn't founded to be a party based on fighting a religious crusade". Former Deputy Chair Suzanne Evans had left earlier that week after Batten survived a vote of confidence from the party NEC. The former leader of the party in the Welsh Assembly, Caroline Jones, and the MEP William Dartmouth had also cited the party's trajectory to the right as reasons for leaving the party. Another former leader, Paul Nuttall, also left for the same reason. By December 2018, a majority of the party's MEPs had left. Others leaving included Peter Whittle, the party's top vote-winner on the London Assembly.


title: UK Independence Party

text: On 9 December 2018, before an important vote on Brexit legislation, UKIP led a "Brexit Betrayal" rally in central London fronted by Robinson, alongside prominent far-right groups. By April 2019, of 24 UKIP MEPs elected in the 2014 European Election, only 4 remained members of UKIP. Ten of these MEPs would later move to Nigel's Farage's new party, The Brexit Party, whilst O'Flynn defected to the SDP. Most others continued to sit as Independent MEPs.


title: UK Independence Party

text: By April 2019, the British government had agreed an extension to EU membership with the EU until 31 October 2019, which would mean the UK would take part in the 2019 European Parliament elections. Candidates selected by UKIP to run in the election included right-wing YouTube personalities, Carl Benjamin and Mark Meechan. Benjamin had caused controversy by making "inappropriate" comments in 2016 about the rape threats to a female Labour MP Jess Phillips, with the UKIP Swindon Branch chair calling for him to be deselected. Videos made by Benjamin in which he used racist terms also caused controversy. In May, the 2019 United Kingdom local elections saw UKIP lose around 80% of the seats it was defending. The party was criticised for failing "to capitalise on the collapse of the Conservatives" by commentators. In the European elections later that month, UKIP received 3.3% of the vote and lost all its remaining seats.


title: UK Independence Party

text: On 2 June 2019, Batten resigned his post as party leader as he had promised if he lost his MEP position. In the 2019 UKIP leadership election, Richard Braine was elected UKIP leader and attempted to appoint Batten as deputy leader. Braine's attempt to appoint Batten as the party's deputy leader was blocked by its National Executive Committee (NEC). Braine was criticised in the press for comments he has made which were considered racist and offensive, including one incident in which he claimed he "often confused" London mayor Sadiq Khan with Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the 7/7 terror attackers. Braine later further came underfire when he announced he planned to boycott the September 2019 UKIP Party conference in Newport, after less than 450 tickets were sold for the conference. The Chairman of UKIP, Kirstan Herriot, stated to members that Braine had attempted to cancel the conference due to the low turnout and was highly critical of this attempted action.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In October 2019, UKIP underwent a leadership crisis in the run-up to its NEC elections after it suspended Braine's membership, and by extension, his eligibility to be party leader, over allegations of data theft from party databases. Three other members associated with Braine – Jeff Armstrong, the party's general secretary appointed by Braine; NEC candidate Mark Dent; and Tony Sharp – were also suspended. In response, Braine accused the NEC of carrying out a purge of members. All four members were reported to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau. On 30 October 2019, Braine resigned as leader of the party. He cited "internal conflict" and an inability to "prevent a purge of good members from the party", referring to the NEC's decision to add "Integrity", an anti-Islam faction within UKIP supporting Tommy Robinson, Batten and Braine, to the party's proscribed list of organisations.


title: UK Independence Party

text: On 7 November 2019, Welsh Assembly Member and UKIP group leader Gareth Bennett resigned from UKIP and chose to sit as an independent in the Welsh Assembly. He stated that he wanted to support Boris Johnson's Brexit deal. As a result, the sole remaining UKIP member of the Welsh Assembly was Neil Hamilton.


title: UK Independence Party

text: On 16 November 2019, National Executive Committee member Patricia Mountain was appointed interim leader in preparation for the December general election and the upcoming UKIP leadership election. Only 44 UKIP candidates stood in the December 2019 general election, targeting constituencies that voted to leave the European Union in which the Brexit Party withdrew their candidates for the Conservatives or where the Conservative candidate was in favour of remaining in the EU. On 2 December 2019, Mountain appeared on Sky News for an interview with journalist Adam Boulton as a part of the launch of the election manifesto for UKIP; it lasted for eight minutes and the interview was described by the "Evening Standard" as a "car crash", and there were reports that she was mistaken for the titular character of "Catherine Tate's Nan". Mountain was unable to name a single seat her party was contending and "accidentally called her party racist". UKIP failed to win any seats it contested in the election and nationwide the party received only 22,817 votes (0.1% of the vote share). This result was the lowest the party had achieved in a general election in the party's history. The party also failed to retain any deposits, only received more than 1,000 votes in two seats, and, in another two seats, finished behind the satirical Official Monster Raving Loony Party.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In January 2020, David Kurten, UKIP's last remaining London Assembly Member, left UKIP to stand as an independent candidate in the 2020 London Assembly election and the 2020 London mayoral election. Kurten described the politics of both UKIP and the Brexit Party as needing "rebranding" once Britain left the EU on 31 January. Kurten's departure ended UKIP's presence on the London Assembly.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In March 2020, according to a tweet by the former leader, Gerard Batten, the party was reported to be "close to insolvency".


title: UK Independence Party

text: On 25 June 2020, Freddy Vachha was elected unopposed as leader. He stated that the party "went astray quite a few years ago" and that under his leadership it would "return to our libertarian freedom-loving principles". On 12 September 2020, it was reported that Vachha had been suspended from the party following a formal complaint of bullying and harassment. Later that day, UKIP Wales leader Neil Hamilton was made interim Leader. Vachha argued a short time later that he was still leader, and that his suspension was unconstitutional, as he claimed to have appointed Marietta King as chairman in place of Ben Walker a few days earlier. Vachha decided to take legal action, however in December a judge refused his request to fast-track the case. Vachha then dropped his legal case and was ordered to pay the party's legal costs.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In the 2021 Senedd election, UKIP performed poorly and suffered a "complete collapse" of voter support, with the Conservative Party gaining a number of voters who had in previous elections voted UKIP. The party finished seventh with 1.56% of regional list votes. Neil Hamilton, Interim UKIP leader and UKIP's sole MS in the Welsh Senedd lost his seat, ending any representation UKIP had outside of local government in England. In the Scottish Parliament election, the party received just 3,848 (0.14%) list votes across the whole country despite standing in every region in Scotland. In the 2021 local elections, UKIP lost all the seats they were defending from the previous elections in those council areas. Furthermore, in the London mayoral election, the UKIP candidate, Peter Gammons, achieved 0.6% of the total vote, finishing 13th. The party finished ninth in the London Assembly election, down from fourth in 2016.


title: UK Independence Party

text: After a period as acting leader, Hamilton was elected as leader in October 2021, receiving 498 votes of 631 cast (78.9%) against challenger John Poynton.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP is situated on the right wing of the left–right political spectrum. More specifically, academic political scientists and commentators have described UKIP as a right-wing populist party, and as part of Europe's wider radical right. The term "populism" refers to political groups which ideologically contrast "the people" against an elite or group of "dangerous others" whom the populists claim threaten the sovereignty of "the people", and during its establishment in 1993, UKIP's founders explicitly described it as a populist party. At the time, its "ideological heritage" lay within the right-wing of the Conservative Party, and UKIP was influenced by the "Tory populism" of Conservative politicians Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell.


title: UK Independence Party

text: The political scientists Amir Abedi and Thomas Carl Lundberg characterised UKIP as an "Anti-Political Establishment" party. The party's rhetoric presents the idea that there is a fundamental divide between the British population and the elite who govern the country. UKIP claims to stand up for ordinary people against this political elite. UKIP politician Bill Etheridge for instance claimed that his party represented "a democratic revolution... the people of Britain rising up and fighting to wrestle power from the elite". Contributing to this anti-establishment message, Farage describes the party's supporters as "the People's Army", and he regularly held photo-opportunities and journalistic interviews in a pub, thus cultivating an "erudite everyman" image that contrasted with his past as a commodities trader.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP uses recurring populist rhetoric—for instance by describing its policies as "common sense" and "straight talking"—in order to present itself as a straightforward alternative to the mainstream parties and their supposedly elusive and complex discourse. UKIP presents the UK's three primary parties—the Conservatives, Labour, and Liberal Democrats—as being essentially interchangeable, referring to them with the portmanteau of "LibLabCon". Farage accused all three parties of being social-democratic in ideology and "virtually indistinguishable from one another on nearly all the key issues". Farage has also accused the Scottish National Party of being "the voice of anti-Englishness", suggesting that elements of the Scottish nationalist movement are "deeply racist, with a total hatred of the English".


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP has always had the politics of national identity at its core. The party is nationalist, and its "basic claim—that the highest priority for the British polity is to assure that it is fully governed by the national state—is a nationalist one." The party describes its position as being that of civic nationalism, and in its manifesto explicitly rejects ethnic nationalism by encouraging support from Britons of all ethnicities and religions. Rejecting claims that it is racist, both Sked and later Farage described UKIP as a "non-racist, non-sectarian party". In UKIP's literature, the party has placed an emphasis on "restoring Britishness" and counteracting what it sees as a "serious existential crisis" exhibited by the "Islamification" of Britain, the "pseudo-nationalisms" of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and the multicultural and supranational policies promoted by "the cultural left", describing its own stance as being "unashamedly unicultural". It has been suggested that this attitude compromises the party's claim that its form of British nationalism is civic and inclusive.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP considers itself to be a British unionist party, although its support base is centred largely in England. Farage has characterised his party's growth as "a very English rebellion", and has described UKIP as "unashamedly patriotic, proud to be who we are as a nation". The political scientist Richard Hayton argued that UKIP's British unionism reflects "Anglo-Britishness", a perspective that blurs the distinction between Britain and England. With Mycock, Hayton argued that in conflating Englishness with Britishness, UKIP exhibited an "inherent Anglocentrism" that negates the distinct culture of the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish peoples of the United Kingdom. Hayton suggests that UKIP tap into "a vein of nostalgic cultural nationalism" within England, and it has been noted that UKIP's discourse frames the image of Englishness in a nostalgic manner, harking back to the years before the collapse of the British Empire.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP has emphasised the need to correct what it perceives as the United Kingdom's imbalance against England resulting from the "West Lothian question" and the Barnett formula. The party has mobilised English nationalist sentiment brought on by English concerns following the devolution within the UK and the rise of Welsh and Scottish nationalisms. The party initially opposed federalism in the UK, criticising the establishment of the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament. However, in September 2011 Farage and the NEC announced their support for the establishment of an English Parliament to accompany the other devolved governments. In its 2015 manifesto, it promised to make St. George's Day and St. David's Day bank holidays in England and Wales, respectively. Similarly, UKIP's 2017 manifesto pledged to declare 23 June British Independence Day and observe it annually as a national holiday.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP embraces the ideology of hard Euroscepticism, also known as "Eurorejectionism". Opposition to the United Kingdom's continued membership of the European Union has been its "core issue" and is "central to the party's identity". UKIP characterises the EU as a fundamentally undemocratic institution and stresses the need to regain what it describes as the UK's national sovereignty from the EU. It presents the EU as being an exemplar of non-accountability, corruption, and inefficiency, and views it as being responsible for the "flooding" of the UK with migrants, in particular from Eastern Europe. UKIP emphasises Euroscepticism to a far greater extent than any of Western Europe's other main radical right parties, and it was only post-2010 that it began seriously articulating other issues. Hayton nevertheless suggested that Euroscepticism still remains "the lens through which most of its other policy positions are framed and understood".


title: UK Independence Party

text: The party opposed the 2004 enlargement of the European Union into eastern Europe. UKIP advocated leaving the European Union, stopping payments to the EU, and withdrawing from EU treaties, while maintaining trading ties with other European countries. Initially, UKIP's policy was that, in the event of them winning a general election, it would remove the UK from the EU without a referendum on the issue. The party leadership later suggested a referendum, expressing the view that in the case of an exit vote, it could negotiate favourable terms for the country's withdrawal, for instance through ensuring a free trade agreement between the UK and EU. UKIP eventually committed to a referendum in their 2015 manifesto. In contrast to involvement in the EU, UKIP has emphasised the UK's global connections, in particularly to member states of the Commonwealth of Nations. UKIP rejected the description that they were "Europhobes", maintaining that its stance was anti-EU, not anti-European.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP has placed great emphasis on the issue of immigration to the UK, and in 2013 Farage described it as "the biggest single issue facing this party". UKIP attributes British membership of the EU as the core cause of immigration to the UK, citing the Union's open-border policies as the reason why large numbers of East European migrants have moved to Britain. On their campaign billboards, UKIP have presented EU migrants as a source of crime, as well as a pressure on housing, the welfare state, and the health service. Farage has emphasised not only the economic impact of migration but also the public anxieties regarding the cultural changes brought by immigration. In its 2009 electoral manifesto, UKIP proposed a five-year ban on any migrants coming to the UK. By 2015, it had modified this to the view that the five-year ban should apply only to unskilled migrants. To regulate the arrival of skilled migrants, it called for the UK to adopt a points-based system akin to that employed by Australia. It advocated the establishment of a watchdog to help curb immigration, and bring the levels of net annual immigration down from the hundreds of thousands to between 20,000 and 50,000, which was the average level in the UK between 1950 and 2000. UKIP calls for all immigrants to require compulsory health insurance, and proposes that migrants be barred from claiming any state benefits until they had been resident in the UK for at least five years.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP gained traction from the fact that post-2008, immigration had come to the forefront of many Britons' minds as a result of increased EU migration and its concomitant social changes. By the 2015 general election, the political scientists James Dennison and Matthew Goodwin argued, UKIP had secured "ownership" of the immigration issue among British voters, having secured it from the Conservatives. However, the party's campaign against immigration has been accused of using racism and xenophobia to win votes. Political scientist David Art suggested that in its campaign to restrict immigration, UKIP had "flirted with xenophobia", while Daniel T. Dye stated that part of the party's appeal was its "sometimes-xenophobic populism", and the journalist Daniel Trilling stated that UKIP tapped into the "anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim populism" that was popular in the late 2000s. The political scientist Simon Usherwood stated that UKIP's hardening of immigration policy "risked reinforcing the party's profile as a quasi-far-right grouping", elsewhere stating that the party was only held together by its opposition to the EU and immigration, suggesting that it had "no ideological coherence" beyond that.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In its 2015 campaign, UKIP called for the foreign aid budget to be cut. It has also advocated a 40% increase in the UK's national defence budget. It opposes British military involvement in conflicts that are not perceived to be in the national interest, specifically rejecting the concept of regime change wars through humanitarian interventionism. For instance, in 2014 it opposed the Cameron government's plans to intervene militarily against the government of Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war. In 2018, UKIP pledged to work with anti-EU populist group The Movement. The party was known for its pro-Russia stance on foreign policy.


title: UK Independence Party

text: On economic policy, UKIP shares the main three parties' acceptance of the core principles of a capitalist market economy, and the party is generally at ease with the global free market. The academics Simon Winlow, Steve Hall, and James Treadwell commented that on economic issues, "UKIP wants to have its cake and eat it. It wants to retain the best bits of the market economy while discarding what it considers the negative outcomes of 21st-century neoliberalism." They noted for instance that it wanted "free movement of capital" yet wanted to curtail "the free movement of workers across borders".


title: UK Independence Party

text: On economic issues, UKIP's original activist base was largely libertarian, supporting an economically liberal approach. Its economic libertarian views have been influenced by classical liberalism and Thatcherism, with Thatcher representing a key influence on UKIP's thought. Farage has characterised UKIP as "the true inheritors" of Thatcher, claiming that the party never would have formed had Thatcher remained Prime Minister of the UK throughout the 1990s. Winlow, Hall, and Treadwell suggested that a UKIP government would pursue "hard-core Thatcherism" on economic policy. UKIP presents itself as a libertarian party, and the political scientists David Deacon and Dominic Wring described it as articulating "a potent brand of libertarian populism". However, commentators writing in "The Spectator", "The Independent", and the "New Statesman" have all challenged the description of UKIP as libertarian, highlighting its socially conservative and economically protectionist policies as being contrary to a libertarian ethos.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP would allow businesses to favour British workers over migrants, and would repeal "much of" Britain's racial discrimination law, which was described as "shocking" by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government and viewed as discriminatory by others. However, Farage insisted that his comments regarding his party's policies on these matters had been "wilfully misinterpreted". Although the party did not have an official stance on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the party's former international trade spokesperson (Lord Dartmouth) and former health and social care spokesperson (Louise Bours) stated that they did wish the National Health Service to be included in the trade deal, according to the "International Business Times".


title: UK Independence Party

text: In "The Guardian", commentator Ed Rooksby described UKIP's approach to many social issues as being "traditionalist and socially conservative", while political scientist Stephen Driver has referred to the party's appeals to "traditional social values". UKIP opposed the introduction of same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom. UKIP wants to repeal the Human Rights Act, and remove Britain from both the European Convention on Refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). On the repeal of Britain's signatory to the ECHR, UKIP would like to see a referendum on the reintroduction of the death penalty in the UK.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In 2015, Farage attracted widespread press attention for suggesting that HIV positive patients who were not British citizens should not receive treatment on the NHS. In that same speech he stated that the UK should put the NHS "there for British people and families, who in many cases have paid into the system for years". Farage has spoken in favour of an insurance-based system in the past, which he said would resemble the French and Dutch style system rather than an American style private system, but this was rejected by the party. He has commented, "we may have to think about ways in the future about dealing with health care differently". Critics of UKIP have claimed that the party's real desire is to dismantle and privatise the NHS, a claim bolstered by the publication of leaked documents showing that in 2013 the UKIP NEC privately spoke positively of NHS privatisation.


title: UK Independence Party

text: Although Farage had long been reticent about focusing on public anxieties surrounding Muslims in Britain, he spoke out following the "Charlie Hebdo" shooting, claiming that there was a "fifth column" of Islamists in the UK who—while "mercifully small" in number—were "out to destroy our whole civilisation". At the same time he called for Western states to do more to promote their Judeo-Christian heritage, and criticised state multiculturalism for promoting social segregation, discouraging integration, and generating a "tick-box approach" to identity politics. In its 2017 manifesto, UKIP pledged to abolish the existence of sharia courts in the UK and ban the wearing of the niqab and burka in public; it claimed that these were needed to promote the integration of Muslims with wider British society.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP is the only major political party in the United Kingdom that does not endorse renewable energy and lower carbon emissions, and its media output regularly promotes climate change denial. Farage and other senior UKIP figures have repeatedly spoken out against the construction of wind farms, deeming them a blot on the rural landscape. UKIP's media present renewable energy as inefficient and unaffordable, and they promote the use of fossil fuels, nuclear energy and fracking.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP has announced that it would repeal the Climate Change Act 2008 and has placed an emphasis on protecting the Green Belt.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In its 2015 election manifesto, UKIP promised to teach a chronological understanding of "British history and achievements" in schools, and it calls for the scrapping of sex education for children under 11. UKIP would introduce an option for students to take an apprenticeship qualification instead of four non-core GCSEs which can be continued at A Level. Schools would be investigated by OFSTED on the presentation of a petition to the Department for Education signed by 25% of parents or governors. UKIP have promoted the scrapping of the government target that 50% of school leavers attend university, and present the policy that tuition fees would be scrapped for students taking approved degrees in science, medicine, technology, engineering or mathematics.


title: UK Independence Party

text: Farage argued that British Overseas Territories like Gibraltar should have representatives in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, akin to the privileges given to French overseas territories in France. Farage believes that all citizens for whom the British Parliament passes legislation, whether in the United Kingdom or its territories, deserve democratic representation in that Parliament.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In 2008, Usherwood noted that UKIP relied heavily on a small number of major financial backers. According to "The Guardian", a leaked internal report to UKIP's executive committee dated to September 2012 shows that the party's leader argued that "the key to money for us will be the hedge fund industry".


title: UK Independence Party

text: According to UKIP's annual returns to the Electoral Commission, in 2013 the party had a total income of £2,479,314. Of this, £714,492 was from membership and subscriptions, £32,115 from fundraising activities and £1,361,640 from donations. By law, individual donations over £7,500 must be reported.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP has several high-profile backers. In March 2009, the Conservative Party's biggest-ever donor, Stuart Wheeler, donated £100,000 to UKIP after criticising Cameron's stance towards the Treaty of Lisbon. He was then expelled from the Conservatives and in 2011 appointed treasurer of UKIP. In October 2014, Arron Banks, who previously gave £25,000 to the Conservatives, increased his UKIP donation from £100,000 to £1 million after Hague said he had never heard of him. The multi-millionaire Paul Sykes has helped finance the party, donating over £1 million to their 2014 campaign at the European Parliament.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In December 2014, Richard Desmond, proprietor of Express Newspapers, donated £300,000 to UKIP. Desmond had previously made the UKIP peer David Stevens his deputy chairman. The donation indicated that Desmond's papers, the "Daily Express", "Sunday Express", "Daily Star" and "Daily Star Sunday", would back UKIP in the 2015 general election. Three weeks before the election, Desmond gave the party a further £1 million.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In September 2016, the major UKIP donor, Arron Banks, said that UKIP would be "dead in the water" if Diane James did not become leader. Following her departure after 18 days, Banks said that he would leave UKIP if Steven Woolfe was prevented from running for leader, and if two other members remained in the party: "If Neil Hamilton and Douglas Carswell [UKIP's only MP] remain in the party, and the NEC decide that Steven Woolfe cannot run for leader, I will be leaving Ukip".


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP's membership numbers increased from 2002 to the time of the 2004 European Parliament election, before hovering around the 16,000 mark during the late 2000s. In 2004, the party claimed 20,000 members, with this remaining broadly stable, and in June 2007 it had a recorded 16,700 members. By July 2013, the figure had grown to 30,000 before ending the year at 32,447. In 2014, the number was 36,000 on 22 April, by 7 May reached 37,000 and on 19 May, less than a fortnight later and only three days before the 2014 European Parliament election, rose to 38,000. In January 2015, UKIP membership was the fifth highest of British parties.


title: UK Independence Party

text: Membership was 45,000 in May 2015, but since then has fallen to 32,757 in November 2016, and as low as 18,000 under Henry Bolton by January 2018.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In June 2018, four political activists known through social media – Paul Joseph Watson, Mark Meechan, Carl Benjamin, and Milo Yiannopoulos – joined the party. This was followed by the party gaining around five hundred members.


title: UK Independence Party

text: The party's report to The Electoral Commission of its accounts as of 31 December 2020 stated the party had a membership of 3,888.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In its early years, UKIP targeted itself towards southern English, middle-class Eurosceptic voters, those who had been supporters of the Conservative Party until John Major's Conservative government signed the Maastricht Treaty. This led to the widespread perception that UKIP's supporters were primarily middle-class ex-Conservative voters, with commentator Peter Oborne characterising UKIP as "the Conservative Party in exile".


title: UK Independence Party

text: After 2009, UKIP refocused its attention to appeal primarily to white British, working-class, blue-collar workers; those who had traditionally voted Labour or in some cases for Thatcher's Conservatives but who had ceased voting or begun to vote BNP since the emergence of the New Labour project in the 1990s. In this way, UKIP's support base does not line up with the historical left-right divide in British politics, instead being primarily rooted in class divisions. This mirrored the voting base of other radical right parties across Western Europe which had grown since the early 1990s. This scenario had come about following the rapid growth of the middle-classes and the concomitant decline of the working-class population in Western Europe; the centre-left, social-democratic parties who had traditionally courted the support of the working classes largely switched their attention to the newly emergent middle-classes, leaving their initial support base increasingly alienated and creating the vacuum which the radical right exploited.


title: UK Independence Party

text: On the basis of their extensive study of data on the subject, in 2014 the political scientists Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford concluded that "UKIP's support has a very clear social profile, more so than any of the mainstream parties. Their electoral base is old, male, working class, white and less educated". They found that 57% of professed UKIP supporters were over the age of 54, while only one in ten were under 35, which they attributed to the fact that UKIP's socially conservative and Eurosceptic platform appealed far more to Britain's older generations that their younger counterparts, who were more socially liberal and less antagonistic towards the EU.


title: UK Independence Party

text: 57% of UKIP supporters were male, which Ford and Goodwin suggested was due to women voters being put off by a number of high-profile sexist remarks made by UKIP candidates. 99.6% of UKIP supporters identified as white, reflecting the fact that ethnic minorities tended to avoid the party. 55% of UKIP supporters had left school aged 16 or under, with only 24% having attended university, suggesting that the party primarily appealed to the least educated voters in society. Ford and Goodwin also found that UKIP's support base was more working-class than that of any other party, with 42% of supporters in blue-collar jobs. Ford and Goodwin described UKIP's voters as primarily comprising the "left behind" sector of society, "older, less skilled and less well educated working-class voters" who felt disenfranchised from the mainstream political parties which had increasingly focused on attracting the support of middle-class swing voters.


title: UK Independence Party

text: Ford and Goodwin nevertheless noted that UKIP was "not a purely blue-collar party but an alliance of manual workers, employers and the self-employed."


title: UK Independence Party

text: Geoffrey Evans and Jon Mellon highlighted that UKIP receive "a greater proportion of their support from lower professionals and managers" than from any other class group. They highlighted that polls repeatedly demonstrated that UKIP drew more votes from Conservative voters than Labour ones. They suggested that the assumption that working-class voters who supported UKIP had previously been Labour voters was misplaced, suggesting that these people had ceased voting for Labour "a long time before UKIP were an effective political presence", having been alienated by Labour's "pro-middle class, pro-EU and, as it eventually turned out, pro-immigration agenda".


title: UK Independence Party

text: In 2011, Goodwin, Ford, and David Cutts published a study that identified Euroscepticism as the main causal factor for voters supporting UKIP, with concern over immigration levels and distrust of the political establishment also featuring as important motives. They noted, however, that during elections for the European Parliament, UKIP was able to broaden its support to gain the vote of largely middle-class Eurosceptics who vote Conservative in other elections.


title: UK Independence Party

text: From their analysis of the data, Ford and Goodwin stated that UKIP's support base has "strong parallels" both with that of Western Europe's other radical right parties and with the BNP during their electoral heyday. Conversely, an earlier study by Richard Whitaker and Philip Lynch, based on polling data from YouGov, concluded that UKIP voters were distinct from those of far-right parties. The authors found that voter support for UKIP correlated with concerns about the value of immigration and a lack of trust in the political system, but the biggest explanatory factor for their support of UKIP was Euroscepticism. A further study by the same authors suggests that UKIP voters' core beliefs align very closely to those of the UKIP candidates; particularly so on issues surrounding European integration, which has resulted in Conservative voters switching to UKIP due to Conservative divisions on this issue. One study found that 63% of UKIP voters considered themselves to be right-wing, while 22% thought centrist and 16% thought leftist. 81% believed that immigration undermined British culture, a view shared by only half the wider British population. On economic issues, there was a divide between UKIP voters and the party itself. In contrast to the party's economic liberalism, UKIP supporters often held more leftist attitudes to the economy, with almost 80% opining that big business took advantage of working people and almost 70% thinking that privatisation had gone too far.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP has been most successful along England's eastern and southern coasts, in parts of south-west England, and in the Labour heartlands of Northern England and Wales. It has not done well in London and in university towns and urban areas with younger populations like Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, and Brighton. It has done well in areas with large numbers of old, white, and poorer people, and weaker in areas with larger numbers of younger, more ethnically and culturally diverse, and financially secure people.


title: UK Independence Party

text: Ford and Goodwin noted that UKIP "barely registers" with young Britons, graduates, ethnic minorities, and pro-EU voters.


title: UK Independence Party

text: According to an Opinium poll in December 2014 on the views of 17- to 22-year-olds, Farage was the least popular political leader. Only 3% of young people questioned said that they intended to vote for UKIP, compared with 19% among voters of all ages. The 17% who said they would vote outside the three main parties were four times more likely to vote for the Green Party than for UKIP. Conversely, a March 2015 Ipsos Mori poll found among 18- to 34-year-olds UKIP was polling nearly as well as the Green Party, somewhat contradicting the idea that Farage lacked appeal for younger voters. On the basis of their fieldwork among supporters of the English Defence League (EDL), an anti-Islam social movement, Winlow, Hall, and Treadwell noted that most EDL supporters whom they encountered intended to vote for UKIP in the build-up to the 2015 general election.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP supporters are sometimes nicknamed "kippers". In May 2017, in response to large defections from the party, Goodwin said "Former Kippers did not walk but literally sprinted over to the Conservatives."


title: UK Independence Party

text: According to Part VII of the UKIP constitution, the party leader is voted for by postal ballot by all paid-up party members "in good standing". The winner is the candidate with the simple majority of votes cast. If there is only one valid candidate for the position, they are elected without the need for a ballot. While the default term length is four years, the leader can obtain an extension of up to a year if there is an imminent General or European Parliament election; this must be approved by at least two-thirds of the 12-person National Executive Committee (NEC). If at least nine NEC members endorse a vote of no confidence in the leader, an Emergency General Meeting (EGM) will be called. When the leadership becomes vacant unexpectedly, the NEC has fourteen days to name an interim leader who exercises all leadership functions until the next leadership election. The leader has the power to name a Deputy Leader of their own choice and assign them whatever duty they choose.


title: UK Independence Party

text: The front bench team is divided into departmental sub-units, the principal ones being the economy, foreign policy and immigration. Sometimes the front bench team consists of more than just the principal positions.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP's organisation is divided into twelve regions: London, South East, South West, Eastern, East Midlands, West Midlands, Yorkshire, North East, North West, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. An additional, thirteenth branch, operates in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar; it held its first public meeting at the Lord Nelson pub in April 2013.


title: UK Independence Party

text: At the end of 2013, UKIP Scotland was dissolved after infighting tore the regional party apart; the party's administrative body was dissolved, Mike Scott-Hayward (the chairman and chief fundraiser) quit, and Farage fired Lord Christopher Monckton via email. The national party and UKIP Scotland focused on supporting the candidates for the 2014 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom. After David Coburn won an MEP seat in Scotland in those elections, he was elected as leader of UKIP Scotland.


title: UK Independence Party

text: Veteran and former long-serving Antrim and Newtownabbey-based councillor, Robert Hill was appointed by Gerard Batten as UKIP's Spokesman for Northern Ireland in May 2018. In August 2018, Welsh Assembly Member Gareth Bennett was elected as leader of UKIP in Wales after a membership ballot.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In the UK, the first-past-the-post voting system for electing MPs to the House of Commons was a significant barrier to UKIP, whose support was widely distributed across different areas rather than being strongly focused in particular constituencies. Further, the system encouraged tactical voting, with many UKIP supporters believing that a vote for the party would be a wasted vote. Recognising this, Farage believed that the best way to win a seat in the House of Commons was to win a by-election, with UKIP contesting a number of these from 2010 onward. Over the next few years, it contested a number of by-elections around the country, coming second in both Barnsley Central and Rotherham.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In 2008, Bob Spink, the MP for Castle Point, resigned the Tory whip (becoming an Independent), but in April that year joined UKIP. However, in November he appeared again as an Independent in Commons proceedings, ultimately losing the seat to a Conservative in 2010.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In 2014, two Conservative MPs changed allegiance to UKIP and resigned their seats to fight by-elections for UKIP. Douglas Carswell won the Clacton by-election on 9 October, making him the first MP to be elected representing UKIP. Mark Reckless was also victorious in the Rochester and Strood by-election on 20 November.


title: UK Independence Party

text: At the 2015 general election, Carswell kept his seat in Clacton but Reckless lost Rochester to the Conservative Kelly Tolhurst. UKIP had 3,881,129 votes (12.6%) and was the third largest party on vote share, yet it won only one seat. Because of this, there were calls from some in UKIP for a voting reform in favour of proportional representation. Carswell quit the party in March 2017 to become an independent, leaving UKIP without any MPs in the Commons.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In the 2017 election, a snap election initiated by PM Theresa May and scheduled for 8 June 2017, UKIP got 1.9% of the votes (after 12.6% in the 2015 election) and no seats in the House of Commons.


title: UK Independence Party

text: On 24 June 1995, UKIP gained its first member of the House of Lords, The Lord Grantley, who had joined the party in 1993 from the Conservatives and had recently succeeded to his father's titles. However, with the coming House of Lords Act 1999, he decided not to stand for election as a continuing member, and so left the House in November 1999. Earlier in 1999, UKIP had gained a second peer in the House of Lords, The Earl of Bradford, but he, too, left the House in November 1999 because of the House of Lords Act. The Lord Pearson of Rannoch and The Lord Willoughby de Broke both defected to UKIP in 2007, giving the party its first representation in the House of Lords since the departure of Lord Grantley and Lord Bradford. The Lord Pearson of Rannoch went on to serve as party leader from November 2009 to September 2010. On 18 September 2012, The Lord Stevens of Ludgate joined UKIP, having sat as an Independent Conservative since his expulsion from the Conservatives in 2004. In Autumn 2018, Lord Willoughby de Broke left UKIP, reducing the party's representation in the upper house back down to two. Lord Stevens also left the party, in December 2018, leaving former leader Lord Pearson as UKIP's sole peer. In October 2019, Lord Pearson resigned his membership of the party, leaving the party with no representatives in the House of Lords.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In October 2012, UKIP gained its first representation in a devolved Assembly the Northern Ireland Assembly in David McNarry, MLA for Strangford, who had left the Ulster Unionist Party. The party however failed to continue its representation at the 2016 election, coming within a hundred votes of taking a seat in East Antrim. This seat was unsuccessfully contested in the 2017 election.


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP's support has been particularly weak in Scotland, where it has no representatives in the devolved parliament. UKIP fielded candidates at the Scottish Parliament election on 5 May 2011, when its platform included a commitment to keep the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, while replacing the separately-elected Members of the Scottish Parliament with the Members of the House of Commons elected in Scotland.


title: UK Independence Party

text: The party fielded candidates on the regional lists in the 2016 election without any success. In the 2021 Scottish Parliament election candidates were again fielded on regional lists.


title: UK Independence Party

text: The party also fielded candidates for the Senedd. In the 2016 election, it entered the Assembly for the first time, winning seven of 60 seats. However, following the resignations of Caroline Jones, Mark Reckless, Nathan Gill and Michelle Brown, by March 2019 the party's representation had fallen to three AMs. UKIP ceased to have a formal Welsh Assembly group after David Rowlands resigned in May 2019 to form a new Brexit Party group with Reckless, Jones and Mandy Jones (who had replaced Nathan Gill on his resignation as an AM).


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP initially paid little attention to local government elections. However, this changed after Farage observed that building localised strongholds of support in various parts of the country had been the process by which the Liberal Democrats had entered the House of Commons, and that this was a strategy that could benefit UKIP. UKIP subsequently focused on the 2011 local elections, in which it fielded over 1,100 candidates, winning seven seats and becoming the main opposition in over 100.


title: UK Independence Party

text: The first UKIP local council election win occurred when one of its members was elected to South Cambridgeshire District Council in 2000. A number of Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour and Independent local councillors in all four constituent nations of the UK defected to UKIP over subsequent years, with the most recent defections to date (May to July 2013) coming from former Conservative councillors in the London Boroughs of Merton, Richmond upon Thames and Havering, and from Labour in Northampton and North-East Lincolnshire. In May 2013, 33 English and one Welsh council held local elections, with UKIP gaining 139 seats for a total of 147, with significant gains in Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Kent.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In the 2013 local elections, UKIP won 147 seats and established itself as the largest opposition party in six English county councils. At the 2013 and 2014 local elections, UKIP made significant gains to become the fourth largest party in terms of councillors in England, and fifth largest in the UK, with over 300 seats (out of about 21,000). In the 2015 local elections, UKIP took control of Thanet District Council, its first majority control of a council. However, the party lost control later in the year after several of its councillors defected and it lost its majority. UKIP later took back control as a majority after winning the 2016 Northwood ward by-election, taking its number of councillors up to 29. In the 2016 local elections, UKIP won 58 council seats, an increase of 25. In the 2017 United Kingdom local elections, UKIP lost all of the seats it was defending but gained one from Labour on Lancashire County Council. in the 2018 United Kingdom local elections, UKIP lost all but 3 of the 126 seats it was defending. In the


title: UK Independence Party

text: 2019 United Kingdom local elections, UKIP suffered severe losses, with its number of councillors collapsing by 145 to 31, in the districts where votes were held that year. Its worst result was in Thanet where it lost 33 councillors.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In the 2021 United Kingdom local elections the party's support fell away and all the 48 council seats in England the party were defending were lost. No seats were won in the London Assembly, Police and Crime Commissioners or elections for Mayors. The 2022 local elections saw the party lose all three seats it was defending from 2018.


title: UK Independence Party

text: As a result of its hard Eurosceptic approach, UKIP does not recognise the legitimacy of the European Parliament, and under Sked's leadership refused to take any of the EP seats that it won. This changed after 1997, when the party decided that its elected representatives would take such seats to publicise its anti-EU agenda.


title: UK Independence Party

text: As a result of the 1999 European parliament election, three UKIP MEPs were elected to the European Parliament. Together with Eurosceptic parties from other nations, they formed a new European parliamentary group called Europe of Democracies and Diversities (EDD).


title: UK Independence Party

text: Following the 2004 European parliament election, 37 MEPs from the UK, Poland, Denmark and Sweden founded a new European Parliamentary group called Independence and Democracy as a direct successor to the EDD group. After the 2009 European parliament election, UKIP was a founder member of a new right-wing grouping called Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) comprising Eurosceptic, radical right, nationalist, national-conservative and other political factions. This group was more right-wing than the previous term's Independence and Democracy group.


title: UK Independence Party

text: Following the 2014 European parliament election, the EFD group was reconstituted as the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD or EFD) group on 24 June 2014, with a significant changes to group composition, including the Five Star Movement of Italy, a total of 48 members. The EFDD group lost official status in October 2014 when the defection of the Latvian MEP Iveta Grigule meant its membership no longer met the required number of states for Parliamentary groups (at least seven different member states). On 20 October, the EFDD announced it had restored the requisite seven state diversity by recruiting Robert Iwaszkiewicz, one of four representatives of the far-right Polish party Congress of the New Right. In December 2014 UKIP co-founded the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe, a European political party whose membership is composed of several member parties of the EFDD parliamentary group.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In the 2009–14 parliament, UKIP ranked 76th out of 76 for attendance, took part in 61% of votes, and had three of the six lowest attending MEPs, which led to criticism from other parties and ex-UKIP MEPs that low participation may damage British interests. Between July 2014 and May 2015, its 23 MEPs maintained their record as the least active, participating on average in only 62.29% of votes. In response to criticism of low participation by UKIP MEPs in the EU Parliament, Farage has said that "Our objective as MEPs is not to keep voting endlessly for more EU legislation and to take power away from Westminster."


title: UK Independence Party

text: UKIP had no members in the European Parliament following the 2019 EU election. Twenty-four UKIP representatives were elected in the 2014 election, but twenty subsequently defected, one was expelled and three lost their seats in the 2019 election. For a full list of defections see here.


title: UK Independence Party

text: James Carver left UKIP to sit as an independent on 28 May 2018. William Dartmouth left the party on 26 September 2018 to sit as an independent, accusing Batten of "hijacking the party to campaign against Islam as a religion" and associating himself with "outlandish people and extreme right-wing groups". Bill Etheridge followed shortly afterwards, on 2 October 2018, saying that the party under Batten's leadership "is seen by voters as a vehicle of hate towards Muslims and the gay community".


title: UK Independence Party

text: In November 2018, Patrick O'Flynn resigned to join the Social Democratic Party in protest over UKIP's move to the "hard right", and Louise Bours became an independent MEP. Former leader Nigel Farage quit on 6 December 2018, as did Scottish MEP David Coburn. Another former leader, Paul Nuttall, quit the party the following day, as did London Assembly Member Peter Whittle. It was reported that Tim Aker had also quietly quit the party earlier in 2018. Julia Reid announced her resignation from UKIP on 8 December 2018, with Jonathan Bullock following the next day. Jill Seymour, Jane Collins and Margot Parker left for the Brexit Party on 15 April 2019, with the first of those three citing the party's current direction and occupation of 'the extreme right of politics' and the second citing Batten's 'sick' defence of Carl Benjamin's rape comments. On 17 April, Jonathan Arnott and Ray Finch both defected to The Brexit Party and, along with Seymour, Collins and Parker, sat in the EFDD group.


title: UK Independence Party

text: As of April 2019, Batten and Agnew were members of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group in the European Parliament while Hookem was "Non-Inscrit" (unattached). All lost their seats in the European Parliament in June 2019.


title: UK Independence Party

text: During the 2010–15 Parliament, two Conservative MPs defected to UKIP and were re-elected in subsequent by-elections. At the 2015 general election, UKIP retained one of these seats (Clacton) and received over 30% of the vote in Boston and Skegness, South Thanet, Heywood and Middleton, Thurrock and Rochester and Strood. It lost its only seat in the 2017 election, when Clacton was regained by the Conservatives.


title: UK Independence Party

text: In campaigning on emotive issues, UKIP has proved divisive. Popular stereotypes have framed it as a far-right party, and portrayed its activists as old white men holding offensive views. The party has faced vocal opposition from anti-fascist groups such as Hope not Hate, who have accused it of tapping into nationalist and xenophobic sentiment in its campaigns. Writing for "The New York Times Magazine", Geoffrey Wheatcroft noted that there had been "a concerted campaign to brand UKIP as racist, an accusation that some of its own activists have done nothing to discourage." Goodwin and Caitlin Milazzo highlighted that Farage had been "routinely ridiculed and dismissed", at best being portrayed as "a beer-swilling populist who wanted to drag Britain back to the 1950s" while at worst depicted as "a racist... would-be demagogue" who secretly wanted to overthrow the UK's liberal parliamentary democracy.


title: UK Independence Party

text: For many years, mainstream political figures derided or demeaned the importance of UKIP, although this did little to obstruct its electoral advances. By 2014, at which point UKIP was securing significant electoral support in the European Parliamentary elections, the main parties began to take it more seriously and devoted more time to countering the electoral threat it posed to them, in turn drawing more journalistic attention to the party. This increased attention gave the party the "oxygen of publicity" which helped bring the party to the attention of previously inattentive voters. Many on Britain's centre-left have been reluctant to accept that UKIP was hindering public support for Labour, instead believing that they were primarily a problem for the Conservatives and would thus help produce a Labour victory. Labour found that their campaign strategy of accusing UKIP of racism backfired, as rather than distancing UKIP supporters from the party it contributed to the perception that Labour failed to understand widespread concerns regarding immigration. A December 2014 poll by ComRes found that voters saw UKIP as closer to the centre-ground of politics than the Conservatives.


title: UK Independence Party

text: The British press have publicised statements made by UKIP activists and candidates which have been regarded as racist, sexist or otherwise bigoted. Among the examples of UKIP representatives and supporters embarrassing the party have been an MEP who called for a ban on the construction of mosques and for all British Muslims to sign a code of conduct, a councillor who suggested that shops should be allowed to refuse service to women and homosexuals, and a council candidate who compared Islam to Nazism and told black comedian Lenny Henry to leave Britain after the latter called for greater ethnic diversity within the UK's creative industries. In 2015, a documentary called "Meet the Ukippers" filmed activists making racist statements; one said "the only people I do have a problem with are negroes". For many years such individuals were internally tolerated within the party, although as part of Farage's push to professionalise the party a number of its members, such as MEP Godfrey Bloom, were expelled for making comments that brought UKIP into disrepute. In 2018, Jo Marney—who was then the girlfriend of the party leader Henry Bolton—was suspended from UKIP after it was revealed that she had sent texts stating that black Africans were "ugly". In these messages, she had criticised Meghan Markle for marrying into the British royal family, stating that Markle was "a dumb little commoner" and "a black American. Pushing their way to the top slowly. Next will be a Muslim PM and a black king."


title: UK Independence Party

text: In a May 2014 YouGov survey, 47% considered the media to be biased against UKIP, which was double the percentage who deemed the media biased against any other party. The BBC received almost 1,200 complaints about its coverage of the 2014 European and local elections; 149 claimed that the BBC were biased against UKIP, while the rest claimed that it gave disproportionate attention to the party. The BBC defended its coverage. Farage accused the BBC of a "liberal bias", particularly on issues of immigration, the EU, and climate change.


title: UK Independence Party

text: David Deacon and Dominic Wring's examination of press coverage of UKIP during their 2014 campaign demonstrated that of the elite newspapers, the pro-EU titles "The Guardian" and "The Observer" gave the most coverage to perceived racist and intolerant aspects of the party, while the Eurosceptic titles "The Times" and "The Sunday Times" instead focused on questioning the propriety and integrity of UKIP representatives. Among the populist tabloids, "The Sun"/"Sun on Sunday" and the "Daily Mirror"/"Sunday Mirror" were found to contain the most negative coverage of UKIP, while the "Daily Express" and "Sunday Express"—owned by UKIP donor Richard Desmond—gave significantly lower coverage to the gaffes and prejudices of UKIP representatives. Deacon and Wring noted that the majority of those right-wing newspapers that share UKIP's views on immigration also share the perspective of more liberal newspapers that many of UKIP's interventions are racist. This right-wing press opposition to UKIP may result from the allegiance that these newspapers have to the Conservatives, and resulting perception of UKIP as an electoral threat.


title: UK Independence Party

text: Academic research has been carried out into UKIP. In 2016, it was noted that most of this had focused on examining the party's electoral support base, its consequences for other parties, and the possibilities and prospects of a referendum on continued EU membership, with little having focused on an examination of the party's policies. Two currents have emerged among those seeking to interpret UKIP: the first, and generally older, current views them as a manifestation of Britain's strong Eurosceptic movement, while the second seeks to explain their position in the British parliamentary system while drawing upon the comparative literature on right-wing populist parties elsewhere in Europe.


title: Toast sandwich

text: A toast sandwich is a sandwich in which the filling between two slices of bread is itself a thin slice of toasted bread, which may be buttered. An 1861 recipe says to add salt and pepper to taste.


title: Toast sandwich

text: A recipe for toast sandwiches is included in the invalid cookery section of the 1861 "Book of Household Management" by Isabella Beeton, who adds, "This sandwich may be varied by adding a little pulled meat, or very fine slices of cold meat, to the toast, and in any of these forms will be found very tempting to the appetite of an invalid."


title: Toast sandwich

text: In November 2011, the toast sandwich was recreated by the Royal Society of Chemistry in a tasting 150 years after the release of Beeton's "Book of Household Management". The society sought to revive the forgotten dish in wake of the Great Recession after calculating the cost as low as per sandwich. They named it "the country's most economical lunch", offering to whoever could create a cheaper edible meal. Due to an overabundance of submissions, the offer was closed seven days later and the £200 given to a randomly selected entrant.


title: Toast sandwich

text: In Heston Blumenthal's restaurant The Fat Duck, 12 toast sandwiches are served as a side dish to the "Mad Hatter's Tea Party (circa 1892)", a main course inspired by "Alice in Wonderland". Blumenthal's recipe for the toast sandwich involves bone marrow salad, egg yolk, mustard, gastrique, mayonnaise, and tomato ketchup.


title: Toast sandwich

text: "The A.V. Club" Mike Vago described it as an "extravagance of blandness". "The Daily Meal" article "12 Life-Changing Sandwiches You've Never Heard Of" said the toast sandwich was "just not that good ... Thankfully, the Dadaists didn't invent any more sandwiches after that."


title: Toast sandwich

text: The toast sandwich was discussed on "The Leonard Lopate Show" in an interview with "The Sporkful"s Dan Pashman. Host Leonard Lopate commented, "it sounds weird to me". The game show panelists on NPR's "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" each tried the toast sandwich. Host Peter Sagal remarked, "This is the culinary equivalent of a Rothko painting. Or it's like a sandwich by Marcel Duchamp! It questions the essence of sandwich and language both!"


title: Mike Faist

text: Michael David Faist (; born January 5, 1992) is an American actor. An alumnus of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, Faist is the recipient of a Grammy and an Emmy, with nominations for a Tony and a British Academy Film Award.


title: Mike Faist

text: Faist began his acting career in 2011 originating the role of Morris Delancey in Disney's "Newsies", appearing in its Broadway production (2012–2013). He continued to appear in several independent films, television series and starring in Off-Broadway productions before his breakthrough originating the role of Connor Murphy in the Broadway musical "Dear Evan Hansen" (2015–2018), for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theatre Album and the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program.


title: Mike Faist

text: In 2021, Faist starred in the series "Panic" and had his first major film part as Riff, the leader of the Jets, in Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story," for which he received critical acclaim and a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.


title: Mike Faist

text: Michael David Faist was born on January 5, 1992, in Gahanna, Ohio, and was adopted by his parents, Julia and Kurt Faist. The family owns a real estate business. As a child, Faist realized he wanted to pursue a career in the performing arts. He was enticed by dancing after seeing Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire in old MGM films, especially Kelly in "Singin' in the Rain". "Just the way he performed and moved, he was able to tell a story through movement," Faist said. At the age of 5, he pressured his parents to enroll him in dance classes and began auditioning for community theater and children's theater. In a Columbus Children's Theatre production of "The Wizard of Oz", he played one of the Lollipop Guild, later joining the cast of "Oliver!" and "Alice in Wonderland". Faist fell in love with acting while attending The Academy of Performing Arts (TAPA) company in Columbus, Ohio and while at Gahanna Lincoln High School he acted in several productions, such as Danny Zuko in "Grease" and Simon in "Jesus Christ Superstar". At the age of 17, Faist met his birth mother and her family, who are mostly pilots by profession. The eldest of his two half-brothers taught him how to fly. Faist has since then obtained his pilot's license.


title: Mike Faist

text: In 2009, he graduated high school and moved to New York to pursue a stage career. He enrolled the American Musical and Dramatic Academy but dropped out after two semesters. While auditioning for Off-Broadway plays, he began selling tickets in Times Square. On his first job as a professional actor in the play "White Christmas", he was collecting food stamps, earning $150 per week, and living in the back of a McDonald's parking lot.


title: Mike Faist

text: Faist began his acting career in 2011, originating the role of Morris Delancey, a bully and publisher Joseph Pulitzer's henchman, in the regional premiere of "Newsies" at the Paper Mill Playhouse. When the musical transferred to Broadway, he understudied the lead role of Jack Kelly, a newsboy who leads his colleagues in a strike against the publisher, in addition to his other roles. Faist had to alternately play the roles in quick succession during the opening number. "You have to really make sure you're warmed up vocally and physically and you're mentally prepared," Faist said of the demands of his dual role, but added, "It's not hard to have fun in Newsies, about the uprising of children, a new generation coming in to take over the old." "Newsies" opened to critical acclaim and was nominated for Best Musical at the 66th Tony Awards. In 2012, he made his feature film debut in the coming-of-age drama "The Unspeakable Act". The independent film received positive reviews.


title: Mike Faist

text: Faist went on to star as Rhys Thurston in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's play "Appropriate" Off-Broadway in 2014, which drew critical acclaim from chief theater critic Ben Brantley of "The New York Times". In 2015, he appeared as Skip in the short film "Yellow," a psychiatric ward patient in "Touched with Fire", and Gordie Joiner in "The Grief of Others" which received critical and generally positive reviews. He was also cast in an unaired pilot of the series "Eye Candy" as Olsen and co-starred as tutor Aleksei Belyaev opposite Peter Dinklage in an Off-Broadway production of "A Month in the Country".


title: Mike Faist

text: In August 2015, he originated the role of Connor Murphy in the hit musical "Dear Evan Hansen", playing the role of the drug addict from the workshop till its Broadway transfer in 2016. The musical received critical acclaim and earned Faist a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. Along with his cast members, he also won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album and the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program for their performance of "You Will Be Found" on "The Today Show". Of his process for developing his character, a suicidal high school student, Faist said that he "read stories by real survivors on a website, livethroughthis.org. I realized that there seems to be a general lack of self-love and empathy in our society. I hope that when people see the show, they'll say, 'Oh, I am loved. I'm exactly who I am, and I am enough'." Along with cast members Ben Levi Ross and Mallory Bechtel, Faist lent his voice for the audiobook version of Val Emmich's "Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel", a book adaptation of the musical released in October 2018.


title: Mike Faist

text: The two following years, Faist continued to feature in small independent films the likes of "Our Time", "I Can I Will I Did" and "Active Adults". He also appeared in crime procedural dramas in a 2017 episode as Glenn Lawrence. In October 2017, he taught Improv and acting exercises in a Broadway Musical Theatre Workshop and also held a Master Class for audition technique and song interpretation. He taught the same class in Montreal that November.


title: Mike Faist

text: In 2018, he appeared in an episode of "Deception" and starred in the Second Stage Theater production of "Days of Rage" as Spence, a conflicted and passionate young man torn between causes and women. He also appeared in the horror-fantasy film "Wildling" opposite Bel Powley. It premiered at South by Southwest to mixed reviews. In 2020, he played a starring role as Arthur in the small independent drama "The Atlantic City Story".


title: Mike Faist

text: In 2021, Faist co-starred as Dodge Mason in the Amazon's teen drama thriller "Panic". "The New York Times" spoke of Faist, describing him as tall and lanky, making quite a striking figure in the series, "With a slender charisma and a bone structure that seems to have been sculpted with a scythe, the actor could easily have embarked on Panic. But his sensitivity is closer to that of leading men as atypical as Adam Driver, and he modernizes a potentially versatile piece." Despite receiving positive reviews from critics, the series was canceled after one season. Faist received a nomination for his work by the Critics Choice Association in the category Best Actor in an Action Series at the 2nd Critics' Choice Super Awards.


title: Mike Faist

text: Later that year, he had his first major movie role in Steven Spielberg's film adaptation of "West Side Story" as Riff, Tony's best friend and leader of the Jets gang. The film was a critical success and some critics deemed it superior to the 1961 film. His performance earned universal praise from critics. "The Washington Post" regards his magnetic performance as "West Side Story"'s "stand-out" as its chief film critic Ann Hornaday wrote "The revelation in this production, however, is Mike Faist, who is not only a gifted singer and dancer, but plays Jets gang leader Riff with just the right mix of spiky resentment, hair-trigger anger and loose-limbed grace.". Critic Pete Hammond of "Deadline" agreed, writing "But the real revelation of this cast is Faist, a Tony nominee for Dear Evan Hansen who just pops and explodes as Riff. With this performance we are watching the birth of a true star, the kind of actor you can't look away from. In fact, I felt a definite sense of loss once he is out of the picture. He's riveting." On his collaboration with Faist, screenwriter Tony Kushner says, "He really wants to think about economics, politics, psychology, and psychotechnology, and he feeds himself with a kind of acuity and precision that I think is the mark of a great actor." To craft a new version of the iconic Jets leader, Faist took inspiration from a 1959 Bruce Davidson photography book entitled "Brooklyn Gang." "You look at those photos and you see these people, the nihilism that exists, their inability to see past tomorrow, or even today for that matter. There's something depressing about it, also carnal, wild, and primal," Faist explained. For his performance, Faist received a nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the 75th British Academy Film Awards.


title: Mike Faist

text: Faist has two upcomings projects. In February 2022, it was announced that he would join Zendaya and Josh O'Connor to star in Luca Guadagnino's "Challengers" as Art, a famed tennis player facing his rival. Faist will also portray photographer Danny Lyon in Jeff Nichols' "The Bikeriders" opposite Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy.


title: Mike Faist

text: Faist writes short stories and has stated that it is important for an actor to write in order to understand scripts. He helped to establish a playwright's festival, the Ohio Artists Gathering, which he described as "a one-week theater festival bringing artists from New York and LA and integrating them with local actors, writers, and directors". The first festival was held in Columbus, Ohio in 2018.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: Frankie Goes to Hollywood were an English synth-pop band formed in Liverpool in 1980. The group's best-known line-up comprised Holly Johnson (vocals), Paul Rutherford (backing vocals), Peter Gill (drums, percussion), Mark O'Toole (bass guitar) and Brian Nash (guitar).


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: The group's 1983 debut single "Relax" was banned by the BBC in 1984 while at number six in the charts and subsequently topped the UK Singles Chart for five consecutive weeks, going on to enjoy prolonged chart success throughout that year and ultimately becoming the seventh-best-selling UK single of all time. It also won the 1985 Brit Award for Best British Single. Their debut album, "Welcome to the Pleasuredome", reached number one in the UK in 1984 with advanced sales of more than one million. After the follow-up success of "Two Tribes" and "The Power of Love", the group became only the second act in the history of the UK charts to reach number one with their first three singles; the first being fellow Liverpudlians Gerry and the Pacemakers in the 1960s. This record remained unbeaten until the Spice Girls achieved a six-single streak in 1996–1997.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: In 1985 the band won the Brit Award for British Breakthrough Act. Associated with the Second British Invasion of the US, they also received Grammy Award and MTV Video Music Award nominations for Best New Artist. Songwriters Johnson, Gill and O'Toole received the 1984 Ivor Novello Award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for "Two Tribes". In 2015, the song was voted by the British public as the nation's 14th-favourite 1980s number one in a poll for ITV.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: Frankie Goes to Hollywood were formed in 1980. On the B-side to the group's first single, Johnson explained that the group's name derived from a page from "The New Yorker" magazine, showing the headline "Frankie Goes Hollywood" and a picture of Frank Sinatra, although the magazine page Johnson referred to was actually a pop art poster by Guy Peellaert featuring a newspaper headline above an image of a young Sinatra being mobbed by his fans.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: The nucleus of the group emerged from the late 1970s Liverpool punk scene. Lead singer Johnson had played bass with Big in Japan and had also released two solo singles. Local musicians Peter Gill (drums), Jed O'Toole (bass), and O'Toole's cousin Brian Nash (guitar) initially joined Johnson, calling themselves Sons and Egypt. This line-up secured a number of small local gigs before disbanding.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: The group was reprised when Johnson joined Mark O'Toole (bass) and Peter "Ped" Gill to form FGTH. During a particularly fluid period of personnel changes, Jed O'Toole joined FGTH on guitar, and a female vocalist, Sonia Mazumder, was also a band member for the first Frankie gig at the Leeds nightclub "The Warehouse", supporting Hambi & The Dance. Paul Rutherford—a member of the headline act who had also sung in seminal Liverpool punk band The Spitfire Boys—apparently got so caught up in Frankie's performance that he effectively replaced Mazumder that very night. The new all-male musical line-up subsequently toured locally with a leather-clad female duo known as "The Leatherpets" and managed to fund promotional videos and demos, despite being eventually turned down by both Arista Records and Phonogram Inc. In October 1982, the group recorded a John Peel Session for BBC Radio 1, comprising the originals "Krisco Kisses", "Two Tribes", "Disneyland", and "The World Is My Oyster". Around this time Jed O'Toole left the group, to be replaced by the returning Brian Nash.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: Nash said the band looked up to Echo & the Bunnymen, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) and The Teardrop Explodes, adding, "That was music from Liverpool but from our generation. You would see these people walking around town, you'd see Ian McCulloch getting on the bus. I never saw any of the Beatles on the bus."


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: In February 1983, the group was invited to record a video for "Relax" by the Channel 4 show "The Tube" at the Liverpool State Ballroom. After the broadcast, the Peel session was repeated on radio, and a new session recorded for the BBC, comprising "Welcome to the Pleasuredome", "The Only Star in Heaven" and "Relax". These performances, along with a repeat of the "Tube" video, convinced Trevor Horn to sign the group for his new label, ZTT Records, in May 1983.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: "Relax" was released by ZTT in October 1983, with production and remix directed by Trevor Horn, received a modicum of airplay, allowing it steady progress into the UK Top 40. Following a debut on the BBC's "Top of the Pops" on 5 January 1984 while at number 35, the single rose to number six the following week.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: On 11 January 1984, BBC Radio 1 disc jockey Mike Read was playing the record on his show when he noticed the front cover design (by Yvonne Gilbert). Read apparently became outraged by the "overtly sexual" nature of both the record sleeve and the printed lyrics, which prompted him to remove the disc from the turntable live on air, branding it "obscene".


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: Two days later — almost three months after the single's initial release, and just eight days after the group's "Top of the Pops" appearance — the BBC banned the record from all its TV and radio outlets. "Relax" immediately shot to number one in the UK charts and stayed there for five weeks, during which time the BBC could not show the nation's best-selling single on "Top of the Pops".


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: The original video was directed by Bernard Rose and depicted a gay S&M parlour where the band members were admired by muscular leathermen, a bleached blonde drag queen, and a large man dressed as a Roman emperor. The video contained a scene in which one of the band members wrestled a live tiger, to the admiration of the clubgoers, and ended where the "emperor" was so excited he shimmied out of his toga. Filmed in the unused East London theatre Wilton's Music Hall, it was promptly banned by both the BBC and MTV, resulting in the production of a substitute video directed by filmmaker Brian De Palma to coincide with the release of his film "Body Double". There have been four official music videos for "Relax".


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: The BBC lifted its ban on "Relax" at the end of 1984 to allow the band to perform it on the Christmas edition of "Top of the Pops" (it had been, aside from Band Aid the biggest-selling single of the year).


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: "Relax" remained in the charts when the follow-up, "Two Tribes", was released in May 1984. The anti-war song was given an aggressively topical nuclear war slant. Featuring sirens, the unmistakable voice of Patrick Allen (who had voiced the British Government's actual nuclear warning ads, "Protect and Survive", two years earlier) and another innovative electronic backing, it went straight into the UK charts at Number One and stayed there for nine weeks (the first single to do so since John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John's "You're the One That I Want" in 1978), with total sales exceeding 1.5 million copies and becoming one of the top 30 best-selling records in the UK ever.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: Directed by Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, the video showed lookalikes of Cold War leaders Ronald Reagan and Konstantin Chernenko wrestling in a marquee while band members and others laid bets on the outcome. Ultimately, the audience — consisting of other world leaders — were brought into the fight, and eventually Earth was seen to explode.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: "Two Tribes" was a successful single in its own right, but its reign at the top of the charts was made even more notable by the continuing success of its predecessor. "Relax" had made a natural decline down the charts by May 1984, but on the release of "Two Tribes" its sales began to increase again, to the extent that FGTH held the top two spots in the UK charts during July 1984, the first active group to do so since the early 1960s.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: The release of "Two Tribes" also coincided with an extensive and iconic T-shirt marketing campaign during the British summer of 1984, featuring such slogans as "Frankie Says War! Hide Yourself" and "Frankie Says Relax Don't Do It!"


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: FGTH released a third single, "The Power of Love", at the end of 1984. Unlike the earlier singles, this song was a slower-paced ballad, but it also went to Number One in December and making the band the first act for two decades (since Gerry and the Pacemakers, a fellow Liverpool band, in 1963) to achieve chart-toppers with its first three releases. The video (directed once again by Godley & Creme) was not banned on this occasion but still caused trouble for the group—because it depicted a nativity scene (and on its first showing did not show any band members, who were subsequently added as picture framing).


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: The song's release was preceded by an advertising campaign that, cheekily, declared it to be the band's third number one single, as if this was a fait accompli. The Band Aid project, for which Johnson recorded a message for the B-side, meant that FGTH managed only one week at the top this time before it was replaced by "Do They Know It's Christmas?"


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: The title track from FGTH's album, "Welcome to the Pleasuredome", was released as a fourth single in March 1985. Early promotional posters for the single proclaimed it as "their fourth number one", even prior to the single's release. However, the single peaked at Number 2. Each 12-inch mix was prefaced by a spoken-word introduction adapted from Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy". For the first mix ("Real Altered"), the intro was spoken by Gary Taylor, for the second ("Fruitness") by actor Geoffrey Palmer.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: Only one new track appeared in the next eighteen months; "Disneyland", was released on the ZTT Records "Zang Tuum Tumb Sampled" album in late 1985.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: In 1986, FGTH appeared at the Montreux Rock Festival which was broadcast on UK television. This performance saw the first airings of two future singles, namely "Rage Hard" and "Warriors of the Wasteland". Both versions were different from the versions eventually released. In August 1986, the long-awaited new Frankie Goes to Hollywood single, "Rage Hard", was released, reaching number 4 in the UK. Initially showcased promotionally with songs like "Warriors of the Wasteland", the group's sound had developed a significantly harder edge with a less flamboyant, more nitty-gritty lyrical side. The album, "Liverpool", was released in October 1986 and reached UK No. 5. It was generally panned by the music press and chart returns declined rapidly with the follow-up singles "Warriors of the Wasteland" (No. 19) and "Watching the Wildlife" (No. 28). The group meanwhile threatened to implode of its own accord, in the course of a tour promoting the new album. Johnson kept himself markedly separate from the rest of the band when offstage during this period, tensions becoming exacerbated during a backstage altercation between Johnson and O'Toole at Wembley Arena in January 1987, reflecting the generally collapsing relationship between lead singer and the rest of the band. Things were so bad that fellow Liverpudlian singer Pete Wylie was approached to replace Johnson but declined the offer. FGTH completed the tour, but Johnson ultimately left the group thereafter, citing musical estrangement.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: In the aftermath of the group split, Johnson was offered a solo recording agreement with MCA Records. However, ZTT, which maintained they had invested heavily in "Liverpool" (to the extent that the digital recording system used to record the album was very nearly treated as a sixth member of the band on the sleeve of the "Warriors of the Wasteland" single), had other ideas, and promptly sued Johnson in an attempt to hold him to his original contract with the label. Among other things, ZTT believed that as a departing member of FGTH, Johnson was required to release all solo material through the label until the band's original multiple-album agreement was fulfilled. The suit was bitterly fought, exposing the inner workings of the ZTT/Frankie machine to a giddy UK music press.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: After two years, the High Court found in Johnson's favour, holding that the highly restrictive terms of the contract constituted an unreasonable restraint of trade. The court case also effectively freed the remaining members of FGTH from their ZTT contract.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: Johnson's solo career at MCA commenced in 1989, with a succession of high-placed singles and the number one album "Blast". The remix collection "Hollelujah" followed, trailed by a second studio album, "Dreams That Money Can't Buy". However, Johnson's relations with MCA cooled with this release, and he would ultimately become a reclusive but successful painter, after announcing in 1993 that he was HIV-positive. The following year, Johnson recounted his version of Frankie's history in his autobiography "A Bone in My Flute". His self-issued 1999 album "Soulstream" included a re-recording of "The Power of Love", which was also released as a single.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: Paul Rutherford, the other openly gay member of the band, released the partially ABC produced album "Oh World" and a handful of singles before retiring with his New Zealander partner to Waiheke Island.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: The "other three", as "Smash Hits" labelled them, continued to work together in what turned out to be a vain attempt to resurrect "Frankie" with various singers including Dee Harris from Fashion and Grant Boult (Jeckyl Ice) from The Premise, who had opened the shows on the band's UK and European tours. Under the name Boss Dog, with Boult on vocals, the band were offered a major deal with Virgin Records but on the condition they work as Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Johnson challenged the use of the name and the deal soured. Boult and Brian Nash continued with the material written by The Shuffle Brothers and under the name Low they released "Tearing My Soul Apart" in 1992 on Swanyard Records. As "Nasher", Nash released a 2002 solo album entitled "Ripe". Ped worked behind the scenes and scored a top ten hit with the group "Lovestation". Mark O'Toole moved to Florida and played with punk outfit "Trapped by Mormons".


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: The band's name lived on to the extent that re-issues of "Relax" and "The Power of Love" both returned to the UK Top 10 in 1993. Remixes of "The Power of Love" (which became a dance anthem from its original ballad format) and "Two Tribes" were Top 20 hits again in 2000, while "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" also got commercially successful remix treatment, to the extent of a Top 20 placing four years earlier.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: The group's first two singles appeared sixth and 22nd, respectively, in the official all-time UK best-selling singles list issued in 2002.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: In 1998, a band calling itself alternately "Frankie Goes to Hollywood" and "The New Frankie Goes to Hollywood Featuring Davey Johnson" began to tour the United States. The band consisted of none of the original members of the band and formed without their knowledge or consent. The impostor band was led by an American using the stage name Davey Johnson, who alternately claimed he was Holly Johnson's brother and had performed as an uncredited session musician on "Welcome to the Pleasuredome". The members of the actual band and their producer Trevor Horn refuted both claims. Mark O'Toole, who had been living in Florida, became aware of the band and warned concert promoters not to hire them. Likewise, A Flock of Seagulls frontman Mike Score, who had been a Liverpool acquaintance of the members of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, kicked the impostor band off his tour after discovering they were a fraud. After Holly Johnson contacted the trade magazine "Pollstar" to confirm that the American-based act was unauthorized, the impostor band was dropped by a booking agent, but continued to be booked by small clubs throughout the southern United States. The fake group continued to perform until at least September 2000, when a feature on the controversy was published in that month's issue of "Spin".


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: In 2003, the VH1 program "Bands Reunited" brought Johnson, Rutherford, Gill, Nash, and Mark O'Toole together, in the hope of their agreeing to perform impromptu on the show. However, a reunion performance did not transpire. Both Johnson and Nash had reservations about performing at short notice in the contrived manner dictated by the TV show format.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: In 2004, a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Trevor Horn's involvement in the music industry a special concert took place at Wembley Arena in November, featuring three of the original FGTH line-up, Mark O'Toole, Peter (Ped) Gill and Paul Rutherford and another former member, Jed O'Toole. Original vocalist Johnson, who announced via the Internet that he would not be appearing, and guitarist Nash, who declined to appear for his own reasons, did not take part. Jed O'Toole took over guitar duties for the event, whilst an open audition was held for a new singer for the concert. Ryan Molloy was recruited as a result.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: The same lineup reunited for a tour in 2005 playing festivals in Europe. They headlined the Big Gay Out festival at Hyde Park in London.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: After some confusion with ensuing tour dates, the band posted a warning on their website that many of the tour dates listed by ticket promoters were inaccurate. The band became increasingly focused on the release of a new album during 2007. However, in early April 2007 came the news that Gill, Rutherford, J. O'Toole and Molloy had formed Forbidden Hollywood to play their new songs alongside old FGTH material. This was to avoid legal issues with Holly Johnson over use of the Frankie Goes to Hollywood name. Live dates were announced, but these were cancelled in June 2007.


title: Frankie Goes to Hollywood

text: In 1985, a computer game entitled "Frankie Goes to Hollywood" was developed by Denton Designs and published by Ocean Software. Based on the band's music, imagery and slogans, the objective of the game was to explore the town of Mundanesville to find the Pleasuredome. It also came boxed with an extra cassette with a live version of "Relax" on it.


title: Molnupiravir

text: Molnupiravir, sold under the brand name Lagevrio, is an antiviral medication that inhibits the replication of certain RNA viruses. It is used to treat COVID-19 in those infected by SARS-CoV-2. It is taken by mouth.


title: Molnupiravir

text: Molnupiravir is a prodrug of the synthetic nucleoside derivative "N"-hydroxycytidine and exerts its antiviral action by introducing copying errors during viral RNA replication.


title: Molnupiravir

text: Molnupiravir was originally developed to treat influenza at Emory University by the university's drug innovation company, Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory (DRIVE), but was reportedly abandoned for mutagenicity concerns. It was then acquired by Miami-based company Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, which later partnered with Merck & Co. to develop the drug further.


title: Molnupiravir

text: Based on positive results in placebo-controlled double-blind randomized clinical trials, molnupiravir was approved for medical use in the United Kingdom in November 2021. In December 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted an emergency use authorization (EUA) to molnupiravir for use in certain populations where other treatments are not feasible. The emergency use authorization was only narrowly approved (13-10) because of questions about efficacy and concerns that molnupiravir's mutagenic effects could create new variants that evade immunity and prolong the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Molnupiravir

text: Molnupiravir is indicated for the treatment of mild-to-moderate coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in adults with positive results of direct SARS-CoV-2 viral testing who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19 and for whom alternative FDA-authorized COVID-19 treatments are not accessible or clinically appropriate. It is the second oral medication against COVID 19 after nirmatrelvir/ritonavir, but with a lower efficacy: about against hospitalization or death in unvaccinated adults with mild or moderate COVID-19 and at least one risk factor for disease progression.


title: Molnupiravir

text: Use during pregnancy is not recommended. There are no human data on use during pregnancy to assess the risk of adverse maternal or fetal outcomes. Based on animal data, the drug may cause fetal harm.


title: Molnupiravir

text: Adverse reactions observed in the phase III MOVe-OUT study included diarrhea (2%), nausea (1%) and dizziness (1%), all of which were mild or moderate.


title: Molnupiravir

text: The effects of overdose are unknown, treatment consists of general supportive measures such as monitoring of clinical status.


title: Molnupiravir

text: Molnupiravir inhibits viral reproduction by promoting widespread mutations in the replication of viral RNA by RNA-directed RNA polymerase. It is metabolized into a ribonucleoside analog that resembles cytidine, β--"N"-Hydroxycytidine 5′-triphosphate (also called EIDD-1931 5′-triphosphate or NHC-TP). During replication, the virus's enzyme incorporates NHC-TP into newly made RNA instead of using real cytidine.


title: Molnupiravir

text: Molnupiravir can swap between two forms (tautomers), one of which mimics cytidine (C) and the other uridine (U). NHC-TP is not recognized as an error by the virus's proofreading exonuclease enzymes, which can replace mutated nucleotides with corrected versions. When the viral RNA polymerase attempts to copy RNA containing molnupiravir, it sometimes interprets it as C and sometimes as U. This causes more mutations in all downstream copies than the virus can survive, an effect called viral error catastrophe or lethal mutagenesis.


title: Molnupiravir

text: In the first step, acetone is used as a protecting group to render two of the three hydroxy groups of uridine unreactive to treatment with the acid anhydride of isobutyric acid, which converts the third hydroxy group to its ester. Treatment with 1,2,4-triazole and phosphoryl chloride produces a reactive intermediate in which the triazole portion can be replaced with hydroxylamine. Finally, removal of the protecting group using formic acid converts the material to molnupiravir.


title: Molnupiravir

text: Molnupiravir was developed at Emory University by its drug innovation company, Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory (DRIVE). In 2014, DRIVE began a screening project funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to find an antiviral drug targeting Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV), which led to the discovery of EIDD-1931. When turned into the prodrug EIDD-2801 (molnupiravir), the compound also showed activity against other RNA viruses including influenza, Ebola, chikungunya, and various coronaviruses.


title: Molnupiravir

text: The international nonproprietary name of the drug was inspired by that of Thor's hammer, Mjölnir. The idea is that the drug will strike down the virus like a mighty blow from the god of thunder.


title: Molnupiravir

text: In 2019, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) approved moving molnupiravir into Phase I clinical trials for influenza.


title: Molnupiravir

text: In March 2020, the research team pivoted to studying SARS-CoV-2, and successfully used molnupiravir to treat human cells infected with the novel coronavirus. A study found that it is orally active against SARS-CoV-2 in ferrets.