Authoritarian libertarian

After resigning from the leadership of UKIP after failing to win the constituency seat of South Thanet and then doing a U-turn two days later, Nigel Farage has said he would have to become 'more autocratic' to hold the party together.  Given that his leadership style is already described as Stalinist, that does not bode well for UKIP's top brass, some of whom have already come out and attacked not the Great Leader but his coterie in a veiled criticism of Farage.  How the newly ensconced UKIP leader must wish he could take out his internal foes with an anti-aircraft gun firing squad, reserving a flamethrower death for election campaign chief Patrick O'Flynn and a death by mortar for Douglas Carswell ('not a shred of him should remain').  North Korea's taste for the gruesome deaths have led to some apocryphal tales such as Kim Jong-Un's uncle being fed alive to a pack of ravenous dogs but Farage at the moment must feel he is fending off such dogs himself.
For a long while, it looked like Farage would lose in South Thanet giving him time to triangulate a return from the moment the ballot was declared.  He didn't exactly resign "in ten minutes" as he promised but he still bit the bullet - or so it seemed.  Re-ascending to the apex in the space of time that even his political hero, Vladimir Putin, would balk at, he unleashed a firestorm of those who hoped to take UKIP to the next level.  Left-leaning O'Flynn and probably Carswell wanted to continue the direction of travel of UKIP picking up working-class votes and no doubt felt that a privately educated, former city trader from the south had taken the party as far as it could go.  That Farage became the proverbial bad penny was most unwelcome.
Yet he seems to have triumphed.  Like Burundian president, Pierre Nkurunziza, provoking street protests (violently suppressed) and an attempted military takeover by seeking an unconstitutional third term, the coup has been defeated.  And like in Burundi, the coup plotters were popular.  Farage has ruled out a leadership election saying that it would be a waste of three months if the In-Out EU referendum is held as early as May 2016, ignoring that nothing much will happen before September in regards campaigning for it.  When challenged to offer a snap leadership election, as on Thursday night's Question Time, he waffles on refusing to answer the question.  It's because Farage knows he would lose, either to Suzanne James or to Carswell.  The national executive may have backed him as well as all the regional executives but there has been much muttering about arm-twisting tactics and, allegedly, only a third of the national executive believes Farage is the right man for UKIP after the general election.  Yet it may be a Pyrrhic victory for the UKIP leader as the party will mobilise for the EU referendum and then dwindle away afterwards, instead of taking the path to permanent viability.  By making the party brand more toxic than it already was before, Farage may have put off those unsure about the merits of EU membership but abhor being in the same camp as The Nigel Farage Party and he would see his long-cherished dream of Brexit slip away.