Nigel Farage resigns: Read former Ukip leader's speech in full

This morning UKIP Leader Nigel Farage followed through with his promise to resign following his failure to win the South Thanet seat, despite calls for him to stay on.

Read the full transcript of his concession speech below:

The definition of whether you’re having a good day or a bad day – and many of you may think I’m having a bad day – but let me tell you, five years ago on election day I was in intensive care after an aeroplane crash so compared to that this feels pretty damn good.

I do congratulate the Prime Minister – he has secured a Tory majority, something nobody thought was possible. Now, there was an earthquake this election, and it happened north of the border – it happened in Scotland.

I think what you saw were a lot of voters so scared by that Labour-SNP coalition that they drifted towards the Conservatives and that included some of the people here who had voted Ukip last time around.

But I saw another shift at this election: I saw Ukip, the party apparently for the retired old colonels suddenly as the party for people under 30: particularly young working women.

There is a big change going on in politics and I think what is really interesting is that we’ve always been here to believe that Britain gets back its democracy, we shouldn’t be governed from Brussels.

But what is interesting is what’s happening within our democracy in this country. We’ve got a party in Britain who got 50% the vote in one of the regions and nearly 100% of the seats and we’ve got another party that scored nearly as many votes, 4m, as well as the European elections last year, that has finished up with one seat in parliament and I think the time has come for real, genuine, radical political reform and I think it’s Ukip that’ll be the party that leads it.

On a professional level I express today a degree of disappointment, on a personal level I believe an enormous weight has been lifted from my shoulders and I’ve never felt happier.

I have seen a shift in our vote and I saw it in Broadstairs, I saw people saying ‘Nigel, we’re going to vote for your in the local elections, we love what you stand for, but we can’t afford to have a Labour-SNP coalition’.

I think some of those older voters who’d been voting Ukip for the last couple of years did vote Conservative yesterday and yet that vote was supplemented, augmented, replaced by a different kind of voter.

The new Ukip voter is predominantly working class and I would characterise our strength in this constituency and it’s seen in this constituency – young working couples and in particular young women now voting Ukip.

They’re looking for change, they’re the kind of peple who work hard, do their best, pay for childcare but are frankly little better off than those that don’t work and that is a big social problem within this country. Personally I think the First Past The Post system is bankrupt. It’s bankrupt because one party can get 50% of the vote in Scotland and nearly 100% of the seats, and our party can get 4m votes and just one seat.

I think for those reasons there’ll be a lot of angry Ukip people up there – not giving up on Ukip but absolutely determined that we get a fairer, more reflective system. There’s something deeper about this First Past The Post system.

What it’s led to is a general election in which because the system that was designed to produce majority government couldn’t do it has let to a totally negative general election campaign. Everybody says ‘these guys, they’re slightly worse than us’ and my feeling is if we have a proportional system, actually you’d say ‘please vote for me because every single vote counts and this is what we stand for’.

I think electoral reform wouldn’t just make our politics fairer, I think it would make it more open, more honest, and we’d see some real, real debate.

Now, I said as this campaign went on that if I didn’t win I would stand down as leader of Ukip. I know that you in the media are used to party leaders making endless promises that they don’t actually keep, but I’m a man of my word, I don’t break my word, so I shall be writing to the Ukip national executive in a few minutes saying that I am standing down as leader of Ukip. I will recommend that pro-temp they put in place as acting leader Suzanne Evans, who I think has emerged from this campaign as an absolute tower of strength within Ukip.

She works in London, she’s based in the London office and I think that’s the right way for us to go. As far as I’m concerned personally well, yes, there’s a bit of me that’s disappointed, but there’s a bit of me that’s happier than I’ve felt for many years.

There hasn’t been a single [inaudible] since 1994 that’s not been dominated by Ukip. I’ve tried to mix that with family, I’ve tried to mix it with running my own business, and it really has been seven days a week, totally unrelenting and occasionally let down by people who perhaps haven’t always said and done the right things.

It really has been seven days a week, totally unrelenting, and occasionally let down by people who perhaps haven't always said and done the right things.

So I feel a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

I haven't had a fortnight's holiday since October 1993, I intend to take the summer off, enjoy myself a little bit, not do very much politics at all.

There will be a leadership election for the next leader of Ukip in September and I will consider over the course of this summer whether to put my name forward to do that job again.

One thing I'm absolutely certain of is there are opportunities coming up electorally - I look at the Welsh Assembly elections next year, the Scottish Parliament the year after, the London Assembly elections, goodness knows what by-elections may come - and I think those four million people out there are pretty loyal.

They're voting for us, not because they think we're slightly less worse than somebody else, they're voting for us because they believe in us.

I think the next chapter of Ukip has begun. I want us to reform our membership model. I want to make this a party you can join for £10 and not £30. I want us to recognise the huge success we've had in this campaign on social media and work even harder on that

I think you'll see a younger, more vibrant, energetic Ukip, campaigning not just to get our country back from Brussels, not just to control immigration sensibly with the Australian-style points system, but one that actually wants to see a fairer society that helps those who are out there working hard and trying their best to have a better life, and an electoral system that actually engages people and gets people thinking that when they vote, they might just get a Government and a Parliament that is representative of their views.

Thank you.'