With no MEPs for the first time since 1999, just a handful of councillors and only two full time elected officials (both in the Welsh Assembly), Gerard Batten’s remodeled NewKip is on its last legs. That doesn’t stop them launching the third leadership battle currently waging on, after the Lib Dems and the Tories, as former leader Gerard Batten announced his term had come to an end today. Now Guido brings you the runners and riders for the leadership…

• Paul Oakley – General Secretary of the party who made headlines when he compared UKIP to “the Black Death” on the Today Programme. He has since written a book on UKIP called “No One Likes Us. We Don’t Care.” Unsuccessful as both an MEP and MLA candidate, maybe this is an election Oakley could win…
• Gareth Bennet – one of just two remaining full time elected politicians for UKIP, Bennett has already thrown his hat into the race. Bennet was previously suspended from the Welsh Assembly when he superimposed the head of a female Labour colleague onto the body of a scantily clad women for a YouTube video. His big transformational idea is to mandate at least one referendum for every Parliamentary term. Guido couldn’t think of anything worse…
• Neil Hamilton – (yes, he still exists). The other remaining full time elected politician for UKIP, also as a member of the Welsh Assembly and now wannabe edgy YouTuber. With more controversies and scandals than Guido can mention, Hamilton recently finished third in the Newport By-Election with 8.6% of the vote. Could he do better within his own party..?
• Elizabeth Jones – UKIP NEC member and failed MEP candidate, who was recently un-suspended from the party after a group of people she was linked to invaded and rampaged a socialist bookstore. The party concluded she never entered the shop.
• Count Dankula – of unfunny but unjust Nazi-Pug video prosecution fame, Dankula (real name Marcus Meechum) sunk further into the UKIP fold, eventually standing for (and losing) the contest to become one of Scotland’s six MEPs.
• Milo Yiannopoulos– trying to raise his profile and put together a new career after his stateside adventure came tumbling down two years ago. During the European Elections he campaigned for the failing party. Could leading it resuscitate him? Guido suspects not.
• Carl Benjamin – another YouTuber and one of NewKip’s most prominent faces, for all the wrong reasons. His refusal to apologise over an incredibly bad taste ‘joke’ about Jess Phillips and his subsequent electoral performance revealed that he might not be best suited to front-line politics.
• Tommy Robinson – still not actually a member, due to a constitutional ban, but the party executive could change the rules.

Whoever gets it, there’s little chance UKIP will rise much beyond the 1% they currently sit at in the polls. RIPKIP.