UKIP stands for the United Kingdom Independence Party, a British political party started in 1993. Its one big idea was that Britain should leave the European Union and make its own laws again. For years most British people treated it as a small, odd party that could not win seats in the national parliament, but it kept doing well in European elections — it won its first local seats in 2004 and later came first in the 2014 European election. Its most famous leader was Nigel Farage. In 2016 Britain voted to leave the EU (the vote people call Brexit), which was the thing UKIP had always wanted; after that the party lost its reason to exist and shrank fast, so today you mostly meet the name when reading about British politics of the 2010s rather than about now. The name is said as one word, YOO-kip. Be aware the word carries strong feeling in Britain — supporters saw it as standing up for ordinary people, and opponents saw it as anti-immigrant — so it is rarely a neutral word there.