Jeffrey Titford

Who is Jeffrey Titford?

Jeffrey William Titford is a British politician who served as leader of the UK Independence Party from 2000 until 2002. He served again as interim leader in September to November 2010 following the resignation of Lord Pearson of Rannoch. He was also a Member of the European Parliament for the East of England from 1999 to 2009.

He had been at various times a member of the Conservative Party, the New Britain Party and the Referendum Party. He was the most successful Referendum Party candidate in the 1997 general election, winning nearly 10 percent of the vote in Harwich. However, later that year he joined the UKIP.

In 1999, Titford became one of the first UKIP representatives to win a seat in the European Parliament. In 2000, UKIP's then leader, Michael Holmes, MEP, resigned amidst serious infighting. Jeffrey Titford narrowly won the ensuing leadership election, promising to reunite the party and restore its effectiveness as a campaigning organisation. This he largely succeeded in doing. The Guardian newspaper described him in 2001 as "an emollient man, a sort of Willie Whitelaw figure, and an ideal leader for such a fractious party".