The leader of the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party has failed to win a seat in the country's parliament and has resigned from his position as UKIP leader. 

Farage came second in the seat of South Thanet with 16,026 votes, well behind the Conservative candidate  who won 18,838 votes after what opinion polls had suggested would be a close fight.

Farage, who has almost single-handedly propelled his party to prominence, said in March that he would quit as its leader if he failed to win the seat. After the result was announced he said he felt "an enormous weight" had been lifted from his shoulders.

He said he would consider standing for the leadership again at some point in the future, but said he would recommend Suzanne Evans, the deputy chairman, be a stand-in leader until the leadership challenge is complete.

UKIP wants to withdraw Britain from the EU and was the largest party in Britain's European Parliament election in May 2014, with 27 per cent of the vote. But its popularity has fallen over the past year and it won just one seat in the Westminster parliament; its sitting MP Douglas Carswell, who defected from the Conservatives, was re-elected in Clacton.

However, the party's overall share of the vote was 13 per cent, leading to renewed claims that the 'first-past-the-post system is "dysfunctional". In his acceptance speech, Carswell said: "Here in our part of Essex people voted for UKIP and they got UKIP.

"Yet across the country, about five million people will have either voted for UKIP or for the Green Party. Those five million people will be lucky to get a tiny handful of MPs in the House of Commons."

UKIP's other MP, fellow defector Mark Reckless, lost his seat to Tory candidate Kelly Tolhurst in Rochester and Strood. 

Additional reporting by Reuters.