In 2006, Farage officially became leader and, under his direction, the party adopted a wider policy platform and capitalised on concerns about rising immigration, in particular among the white British working class.

[17] UKIP subsequently saw its vote share and membership heavily decline, losing all of its elected representatives amid much internal instability and a drift toward a far-right, anti-Islam message.

Having an ideological heritage stemming from the right-wing of the Conservative Party, it has distinguished itself from the political establishment through heavy use of populist rhetoric, for example, through Farage's description of its supporters as the "People's Army".

While gaining electoral support from various sectors of British society, psephologists established that at its height, UKIP's primary voting base consisted of older, working-class white men living in England.

The League opposed the recently signed Maastricht Treaty and sought to sway the governing Conservative Party towards removing the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU).

[47] He sought to broaden UKIP's image from that of a single-issue party by introducing an array of conservative policies, including reducing immigration, tax cuts, restoring grammar schools, and climate change denial.

[57][58] The subsequent leadership election was won by Lord (Malcolm) Pearson, who emphasised UKIP's opposition to high immigration rates and Islamism in Britain, calling for a ban on the burqa being worn in public.

[145] 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.

[199] Contributing to this anti-establishment message, Farage describes the party's supporters as "the People's Army",[200] 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.

[201] 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.

[209] 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".

[195] 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.

[103] 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.

[233] 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.

Ideologically, the party combines a mix of old-style liberal commitments to free markets, limited government and individual freedom with conservative appeals to national sovereignty and traditional social values."

[258][259][260] UKIP would allow businesses to favour British workers over migrants,[261] and would repeal "much of" Britain's racial discrimination law, which was described as "shocking" by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government[262] and viewed as discriminatory by others.

[274] 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".

[275] 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.

[276] UKIP is the only major political party in the United Kingdom that does not endorse renewable energy and lower carbon emissions,[277] and its media output regularly promotes climate change denial.

[284] 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".

[314] 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.

[326] 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.

[328] Ukip has become more than the single issue on which it was founded: under Farage's leadership it has become a welcoming home for the many in British society who feel that 'the system' isn't working for them, or has left them behind, economically, socially or politically.

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.

[334] 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.

[354] 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.

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.

[398] 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.

[415] In November 2018, Patrick O'Flynn resigned to join the Social Democratic Party in protest over UKIP's move to the "hard right",[416] and Louise Bours became an independent MEP.

[448] 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.