Nigel Farage urged to stay on as Ukip leader

Despite promising to resign as leader within 10 minutes of losing in South Thanet Mr Farage could try to cling on

Nigel Farage said he had 'never been happier' after losing in Thanet South

Nigel Farage will face pleas from UKIP members today not to carry through his promise to resign the party leadership after failing to win a seat in Thanet South.

His defeat at the hands of the Conservative candidate Craig Mackinlay was greeted with derisive cries of “Bye Nigel!” as the figures were announced. Defeat brought to a bitter end a long night of disappointments for UKIP. They had hoped to send half a dozen or MPs into a hung Parliament, making the party a player on the national stage. Instead they ended the long night with just one – Douglas Carswell, the former Tory defector who held his Clacton seat, though not as decisively as he won it last year in a by-election when he first fought under the UKIP colours.

His defeat came as a shock to UKIP activists who had put their faith in a Survation poll carried out in the constituency which gave Nigel Farage a comfortable nine percentage point lead.

That poll appears to have contributed to the UKIP leader’s defeat, because – as one Tory campaigner put it – “it frightened the horses” and galvanised Conservative campaign headquarters into sending three experienced professionals to South Thanet to help their candidate, Craig Mackinlay.

A triumphant Craig Mackinlay said: “It was here that the political ground was supposed to shake… but the country has not experienced an earthquake or even a tremor.”

Nigel Farage’s defeat was the worst blow of the long night, made all the more frustrating by an extraordinary delay in counting the votes. The count, in Margate’s Winter Gardens, began three and a half hours later, and a result that was expected at 6.00 am did come until after 10.30 am.

Nationally, UKIP gleaned almost four times as many as in 2010. Mr Farage hinted that they feel cheated that almost four million votes produced only one MP, and that UKIp will now campaign for a change in the electoral system.