Lord Pearson resigns as Leader

Lord Pearson has decided to call it a day as Leader of UKIP after a somewhat inconsistent year at the helm.

After a pretty convincing victory in last year's leadership elections, Lord Pearson took over the reins with promises of defections, new money and electoral victory.  High profile defections have been conspicuously absent but new money has been trickling in and although we failed to get an MP elected in the general election, we did increase our vote by 50% to almost a million votes.

So Lord Pearson's brief tenure, whilst not exactly the best 12 months we've had, certainly hasn't been a disaster.

But what's important now is the succession.  We have an NEC election right now and an interim leader will be appointed at the conference next month.  It's an opportunity to change the entire leadership of the party but we must be careful not to change things for change's sake - we need some stability.

I believe that David Campbell Bannerman has put his hat into the ring already and it looks like Frank Maloney is going to do the same.  Paul Nuttall seems to be a popular suggestion with members and Nigel Farage won't rule out standing again.

Paul is doing a fantastic job as Chairman of the party and as an MEP.  He would make an excellent Leader - possibly the only man (or woman), in my opinion, that can fill Nigel's shoes.  Nigel remains our most high profile figure and the publicity his return would generate would be very useful.

Until we get a full list of candidates, it's impossible to say who the best person is for the job but so far only Paul Nuttall or Nigel Farage would get my vote.