This thesis studies the presence of different nationalist themes in the rhetoric of The United Kingdom Independence Party’s (UKIP) manifestos for general elections between 1997 and 2018 exploring how the rhetoric of UKIP’s manifestos use various nationalist themes and the continuity and change in the presence of these themes over time. The theoretical approach for this thesis consists of a set of modernist and contemporary nationalist theories utilising primarily the works of John Breuilly, Benedict Andersson and Michael Billig. Drawing from these theoretical concepts, three main categories were created for the nationalist themes: ‘Distinct people’, ‘distinct history’ and ‘distinct interests’. This thesis conducts a longitudinal, single-case content analysis, that employs mixed methods by qualitatively coding the manifestos using a deductive coding frame, and by counting the assigned codes and providing a quantitative analysis on the presence of nationalist themes in the manifestos. The main findings of this thesis include that the overall number of nationalist themes in the manifestos is showing a decreasing trend and that ‘distinct interest’, mainly through a rhetoric which identifies threats to independence is the most prevalent theme. Additionally, the rhetoric seems to have shifted towards a more flattering and self-praising one.