Britain’s surging anti-EU party fell into a post-election power struggle yesterday after its campaign chief accused advisers of creating a “personality cult” around charismatic leader Nigel Farage, and a big donor called for Farage to resign.

The UK Independence Party, known as Ukip, surged into third place with 12.6 per cent of the popular vote at last week’s general election. But under Britain’s first-past-the-post system in which candidates must win individual seats, it emerged with just a single seat in the 650-seat House of Commons, despite placing second in more than 100 districts countrywide.

Farage, whose telegenic personality as a beer-drinking man of the people helped turn a fringe movement into a major political force, lost his own bid for a seat and swiftly announced he would fulfil a pledge to resign as party leader. But three days later he reversed the decision, saying he had been persuaded by party officials to stay on.

Campaign chief Patrick O’Flynn said advisers were making a “personality cult” out of Farage and steering the party to the hard right, which would damage it and the wider campaign to leave the EU.

“There are poisonous influences which have to be removed,” O’Flynn, a Ukip lawmaker in the European Parliament, told Sky News. “He has unfortunately fallen [under the influence of] a couple of people in his inner circle who are wrong ’uns.”

Earlier, O’Flynn told The Times newspaper that Farage had let himself be portrayed as a “snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive” man. Ukip, which wants Britain to leave the European Union and for immigration to be sharply curbed, has survived past scandals involving party figures caught making racist or sexist remarks. Farage has also seen off challenges to his leadership.

But the latest feud appears to be more serious, potentially determining the future of a party expected to lead the campaign for Britain to leave the EU in a referendum Prime Minister David Cameron has promised by the end of 2017.

A visitor spraying graffiti near a sign reading “Farage Out” outside the European Parliament on Open Doors Day of the European Union institutions in Brussels, Belgium, on May 9. Photo: Francois Lenoir/Reuters

O’Flynn said the advisers had been trying to turn the party into “some hard-right ultra-aggressive American Tea Party type movement” rather than keep it anchored in “the common sense centre of British politics”.

He insisted, however, that he still Ukip leader and wasn’t planning a “coup” against him.

Farage’s decision to backtrack on his pledge to step down appears to have alienated some donors. “I would like him to step down at least for the moment... and if he wants him to put himself up in an election he has every right to do so. But personally I would prefer someone else now,” said businessman Stuart Wheeler, a former supporter of Cameron’s Conservatives whose donations of more than £600,000 to Ukip helped make it a formidable force.

However, Arron Banks, another major Ukip donor, defended Farage, telling the BBC Farage had “given his all” to build Ukip and that he “deserved a rest rather than petty squabbling from lesser people”.

One of Farage’s advisers, Raheem Kassam, told Reuters he would not be commenting on O’Flynn’s remarks and that he was on holiday.

A party spokeswoman said it was unclear whether Ukip would respond to O’Flynn but said the dispute was not about Farage’s leadership but about who was advising him.

In a tactic typical of British party feuds, unidentified party sources close to Farage were quoted in the media criticising O’Flynn, making derogatory comments about his education and abilities.

The party’s only candidate to win a seat in the election, Douglas Carswell, has also been involved in a public dispute with party leadership over how much public money it should claim as a result of last week’s election.

Under the rules, the party is entitled to money to fund the work of its lawmakers based in part on how many votes it received.

But Carswell, who defected last year from the Conservatives, has argued that as Ukip’s only member of parliament, he does not need the millions of pounds the party is entitled to, and taking it would be wrong.