MADRID: DONCASTER, UK: Britain’s eurosceptic UK Independence Party began its annual conference at a horse racing track on Friday, giddying up for two key votes next month ahead of a 2015 general election.

The party has kept a relatively low profile since European Parliament elections in May when it won a 27.5 percent share of the vote, the highest of any British political group.

It has been working on proposals that it hopes will take it beyond its southeast England heartland and into other parts where the Conservatives and Labor are far stronger and give it a foothold in the British Parliament for the first time.

UKIP is billing its annual conference as its “most important” yet and more than 2,000 delegates are expected to turn up to hear leader Nigel Farage in this Yorkshire town which was badly impacted by coal mine closures in the 1970s and 1980s.

The conference is likely to be overshadowed, however, by a critical debate in the British Parliament on whether to join US-led air strikes against Islamic Group militants in Iraq.

“I think there is an element, perhaps, in the government’s planning, that said today suited them. It certainly doesn’t suit UKIP,” Farage told Britain’s ITV news channel.