Mr Kilroy-Silk will speak on the party conference's first day

UKIP came third in Thursday's Hartlepool by-election, pushing the Tories into fourth place.

The Bristol conference will discuss whether to put up candidates in every constituency at a general election.

Alternatively, the party may decide to stand down in those seats where the sitting MP backs its anti-EU stance.

'Marvellous backdrop'

The two-day Bristol conference will begin with a parade of the party's recent election winners.

These include the 11 UKIP MEPs who took up their seats after June's European elections and the party's two new London Assembly members.

If the people like what we say I am positive they will come out at the general election and will give us that support Geoffrey Titford, UKIP MEP

UKIP's leaders are confident the party can win seats at the next election, pointing out that in the European elections they came first in 22 constituencies.

However, they accept they would win nothing like that number of seats in a general election.

Jeffrey Titford, the party's MEP for the Eastern region, said the Hartlepool result - where the party was beaten only by Labour and the Lib Dems - had given it a huge boost.

"It is a marvellous backdrop and I'm sure the members will be elated when they arrive (at the conference)," he told BBC Radio Five Live.

He said he "firmly believed" the party's recent successes could be translated into Westminster seats.

"About 70% of the people in this country don't want the European Union and that's a wonderful basis from which to start and expound our theories and ideas."

He denied his party was a single-issue party, saying that its MEPs dealt with many different subjects..

Kilroy-Silk speech

"We have somebody who looks after security and defence, somebody after transport, somebody on economic and monetary affairs; myself, I'm supposed to be an authority on agriculture and rural development.

"We are developing all those ideas, but we are developing not them not just with the EU in mind and how we've got to act in the moment, but what the future holds for these if we can come back to self-government in this country.

"And that is the basis of our policy, and if the people like what we say I am positive they will come out at the general election and will give us that support."

East Midlands MEP and former BBC chat show host Robert Kilroy-Silk will give a speech at noon on Saturday.

The afternoon sees a debate on whether at the next general election UKIP should fight every seat where the sitting MP has not agreed to "oppose further EU integration and... support Britain's withdrawal from the European Union".