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Nigel Farage: "My ambition and conviction is that we can come first... and cause an earthquake in British politics"
Leader Nigel Farage has predicted his UK Independence Party will come first in next year's European elections.
Addressing UKIP's annual conference he said the party is also set to overtake the Liberal Democrats, in terms of members, within two years.
UKIP has reached unprecedented heights in the opinion polls under Mr Farage, prospering in May's local elections.
The anti-EU party also came second in the last European elections in 2009.
It gained 16.5% of the popular vote - second only to the Conservatives - and returned 13 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).
But, at the 2010 general election, support dwindled to 3.1% and UKIP did not win a single Westminster seat. In this May's local elections in England, however, it added 139 council seats to its tally.
Mr Farage has refused to predict how the party's Westminster candidates would fare in 2015 but says he wants to turn the next European elections "into a referendum on EU membership".
'Teenage years'He told members at the conference in central London later that, by the next general election, UKIP would overtake the Lib Dems in terms of its support base.
Nigel Farage talks about his party growing up. He likens it to a difficult teenager reaching adulthood.
But with this comes a dilemma. In taking UKIP through maturity, should he order his politicians to be more careful in their public pronouncements?
He prides himself on rejecting political correctness and of running an organisation in which people are free to say what they think. But recent controversial comments by some senior party figures attracted a raft of negative headlines.
They allowed UKIP's opponents to claim the party isn't serious, isn't grown-up, isn't capable of being in power.
Mr Farage knows he probably ought to rein in some of those around him if UKIP is to avoid political own-goals. And yet at the same time he doesn't want UKIP to be full of "cardboard cut-outs" - as he sees politicians in the main parties.
It's one of the many tough decisions he faces if he is to see his party go further.
"We've 30,000 members and growing fast," he claimed. "Certainly by the time of the general election we'll be the third-highest-membership party in Britain."
The Liberal Democrats had 42,501 members at the last count.
Earlier, Mr Farage acknowledged that success had brought added pressures.
"When a political party goes from being very small to being medium-sized or big, it's rather like growing up," he said. "There are some difficult teenage years that you have to get through. Of course we've had one or two people we'd rather hadn't come along."
Mr Farage has dismissed reports that, as a 17-year-old student at Dulwich College, he used "racist and fascist" language - describing allegations broadcast by Channel 4 News as "complete and utter nonsense".
"I think I regret virtually everything I said and did at 17," he told BBC Breakfast.
"It was felt inappropriate to discuss immigration so we did it with glee... it was nothing more than a wind-up."
'Cronies'The party is meeting just days after one of its ex-deputy leaders quit the party, frustrated by its "totalitarian" leadership.
Mike Nattrass - West Midlands MEP and a member for 15 years - accused Mr Farage of silencing dissent and surrounding himself with "cronies".
In Lincolnshire, county councillor Chris Pain was kicked out, he claims, because the leader feared he was "creating a power base" to seize his job.
But Mr Farage, by far the party's best-known figure, outlined his popularity with voters, saying in his speech: "They are fed up to the back teeth with the cardboard cut-out careerists in Westminster, the spot-the-difference politicians... the politicians who daren't say what they really mean."
While there was no mention of the members who quit in protest at his leadership, he acknowledged internal clashes.
Mr Farage told party members he had a "blistering row" with Godfrey Bloom - the UKIP MEP who courted controversy recently by claiming British foreign aid goes to "bongo-bongo land".
Alluding to the comments, he referred to "public pronouncements that I would not always choose myself".
The two-day conference is also set to discuss the UKIP leadership's plans to ensure migrants have private health insurance and for social housing to be prioritised for people whose parents or grandparents were born locally.
Energy spokesman Roger Helmer earlier announced the party would invest profits from shale gas extraction in a sovereign wealth fund.
He is expected to dismiss opponents of fracking as "eco-freaks".
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