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UKIP leader Nigel Farage will tonight bid to be selected by local party members as their candidate to stand in next year's general election.

Mr Farage ended months of speculation earlier this month by saying he had "thrown my hat in the ring" and will vie to be the prospective MP in Kent's South Thanet seat at the 2015 contest.

But he has insisted he is "no shoo-in", saying that despite being party leader , "rank means nothing" in Ukip and that selection to fight for the seat lies with branch members.

Tonight, South Thanet Ukip members will put questions to the four candidates in hustings at St Lawrence College Theatre in Ramsgate before votes are cast.

The four candidates are Ukip South East England MEP Mr Farage, family lawyer Elizabeth Jones, barrister Piers Wauchope and Peter Bucklitsch, a fellow of the Institute of Financial Accountants.

The winner will seek to win the seat currently held by Conservative Laura Sandys, who won South Thanet with a majority of 7,617 in 2010.

Ms Sandys announced she was standing down at the general election after one parliamentary term, citing "a wide range of family demands" as her reason.

If selected to stand in South Thanet, Mr Farage will go up against Craig MacKinlay, the former Ukip leader chosen to stand for the Conservatives.

Ian Driver has been selected as the Greens' prospective parliamentary candidate, Will Scobie for Labour and Russ Timpson for the Liberal Democrats.

Mr Farage was born in Kent and has represented the region in the European Parliament since 1999. South Thanet has a reputation as an electoral bellwether.

Mr Farage hopes victory there next year will signal the arrival of Ukip as a force within Westminster politics and act as a springboard to further electoral gains.

Since 1983, when the South Thanet seat was first created, it has always been held by the party that has formed the government of the day.

While Mr Farage has no hope of occupying No 10, electoral success for Ukip could see him play a role in coalition negotiations in the event of a hung parliament.

When Ms Sandys secured the seat, she ousted Labour former minister Stephen Ladyman, who had held the seat since Tony Blair's 1997 landslide.

He defeated the constituency's most high-profile former MP - the Tory ex-Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken, who two years later was jailed for perjury.

Mr Aitken had previously represented Thanet East, which was abolished when the new constituency was created.

Mr Farage stood in South Thanet in 2005, only to finish fourth with 2,079 votes, a 5% share.

But Ukip's recent electoral success has made victory in the seat a very real prospect, with the party performing strongly in Kent in this year's European elections.

Across the Thanet District Council area Ukip topped the poll, with 16,492 votes, more than double the votes cast for the second-placed Tories.

The constituency includes the coastal towns of Ramsgate, Sandwich and Broadstairs. The hustings start from 7pm today.