Following the NF's failure at the 1979 general election, Fountaine split with Tyndall in 1979, and challenged him for the leadership, but was defeated and split from the NF to form his own NF Constitutional Movement, later called the Nationalist Party. The new party claimed 2,000 members by January 1980 and published a newspaper, "Excalibur". The new movement was short-lived as Fountaine became disillusioned with the far right's in-fighting. He retired from politics in 1981 to concentrate on growing trees on his estate Narford Hall, northwest of Swaffham, and remained there until his death in 1997.