LONDON: Britain’s anti-immigration, anti-EU UK Independence Party (Ukip) lost its only MP on Saturday when Douglas Carswell quit the party, just days before Prime Minister Theresa May is to launch the formal Brexit process.

Carswell defected from the ruling Conservative Party in 2014 to become the only Ukip member of the 650-seat House of Commons, but he has long been at odds with the party’s founder, Nigel Farage.

In a blog post, Carswell said the party had played a leading role in last year’s referendum vote to leave the European Union, but it was “job done”.

“I will leave Ukip amicably, cheerfully and in the knowledge that we won,” he wrote, adding that he would continue to serve as an independent lawmaker.

Carswell’s ties with the rest of the party had long been strained, and Farage had accused him of being soft on immigration — a key issue in the June 23 Brexit referendum.

Although Farage is no longer leader of Ukip, last month he asked Carswell to step down, saying he “actively and transparently seeks to damage us”.

Carswell was first elected to parliament in 2005 as a Conservative, and his 2014 resignation sparked a by-election in which he was re-elected as a Ukip lawmaker for the south-eastern English seat of Clacton.

“Like many of you, I switched to Ukip because I desperately wanted us to leave the EU,” he wrote. “Now we can be certain that that is going to happen, I have decided that I will be leaving Ukip,” he said, adding that “Brexit is in good hands.”

Carswell paid tribute to Ukip’s efforts, saying that despite their failure to have more MPs voted

into parliament, “we would not be leaving the EU if it was not for Ukip, and for those remarkable people who founded, supported and sustained our party over that period.”

For Tim Farron, leader of the pro-European Liberal Democrats, Carswell’s decision to quit showed that the party had outlived its usefulness. “Ukip have no purpose. Theresa May is now effectively Ukip’s leader and has adopted their hard Brexit agenda,” he said.

Published in Dawn, March 26th, 2017