Farage may not stand again. He is looking a bit tired. They have thrown the kitchen sink at him. He may want to go fishing which he loves and lead an easy life.
Farage is exceptional, has exceptional courage and is not politically correct, they can't frighten him into silence. That is why they fear him.
To run UKIP you need exceptional courage because the Establishment will throw everything they have got at you. You must not be politicallly correct because if they spot a weakness they will hit you. You must have the courage to face them down and take them on.
In my opinion, there are only two people who could lead UKIP apart from Farage - two people with exceptional courage who are not politically correct - Diane James and Paul Nuttall. That is it.
To lead parties you need talent, you need courage, you need integrity and for UKIP, you must have UKIP instincts and absolutely no fear. Those qualities are rare and omly Farage, Diane James and Paul Nuttall have them in my opinion.
UKIP is down, but not yet out.
Here is Peter Oborne on Farage and what it takes.
"Meanwhile, British party democracy has collapsed, along with the post-war economic model. All political leaders have embarked on a muddled and pitiful attempt to discover fresh modes of leadership and political expression.
Only one politician seems to be entirely at home in this post-democratic landscape. There is a paradox about Nigel Farage. In an era that has been stripped of familiar signposts, he might have walked straight off the set of an Ealing comedy. Dickens would have loved him. There has been no Axelrod figure lurking behind Mr Farage, trying to make him say the right things or wear the right clothes. He has advanced to his position of unprecedented public influence on his own terms. Voters sense this and respect it.
For many years, the Ukip leader was ignored by the mainstream media. In the 2004 European elections, Ukip marked its first major breakthrough, winning 16 per cent of the seats. However, the BBC marked the party down as “other” in its news report the following day.
Now that Mr Farage can no longer be ignored, he is sneered at instead. Even so, it looks possible that next week he will come top in the national vote. This will be a truly astounding achievement. No political party in modern history – not even Neil Kinnock’s Labour in 1987 – has come under such sustained attack and misrepresentation. Mr Kinnock at least had The Guardian and the Daily Mirror; Mr Farage cannot boast a single national title, and several papers are running vendettas against him. Mr Kinnock was treated reasonably fairly by the broadcast media. This is not the case with Mr Farage: consider the lacerating contempt shown towards him by Channel 4 News and its chief presenter, Jon Snow. Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, has also abandoned his usual fairness when dealing with the party."
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10830882/British-politics-is-broken-and-only-Nigel-Farage-is-profiting.html