We should be used by now to UKIP losing senior members on an almost daily basis, but the resignation of former leadership contender, Suzanne Evans yesterday seems more significant if only because it highlights the depths that the party's latest change of direction have plumbed.
Ms Evans announced she is quitting UKIP in a fiery statement claiming the party is “becoming a successor to the British National Party”. As the Standard reports, she hit out at the party’s leader, Gerard Batten, and the decision to appoint former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson as an adviser:
She wrote: “The NEC and UKIP MEPs might be willing to turn a blind eye to the obvious attempts by Gerard and Tommy Robinson to orchestrate a ‘Momentum-style’ takeover of UKIP, but I am not.
“Having planned to simply let my membership lapse in March, when it is due for renewal, I have today cancelled it instead.
“I joined UKIP because it was a Brexit party, and because I wanted a referendum on our EU membership.
“I would never have joined UKIP as it stands today, obsessed as it is with becoming a successor to the BNP and the EDL, and putting an increasingly hostile and vicious focus on attacking the Muslim community en masse.
“I am very proud of my work with UKIP in the past, and all I have previously helped the party achieve. I have no regrets on that front whatsoever.
“However, the time has most definitely come to completely sever my connection to UKIP because, quite simply, it is no longer the party I joined, and it is not now one I want any part of.”
Ms Evans' resignation follows on from MEP Patrick O’Flynn's high-profile departure. He had represented the party in Europe since 2014, but left because of the UKIP leader's 'growing fixation' with Tommy Robinson.
He had previously supported a ban on former BNP and EDL members joining the party including Tommy Robinson, however, Tommy Robinson has now been appointed as an adviser to Gerard Batten.
Any claim that UKIP had of becoming a mainstream party has long disappeared with this movement to the right-wing fringes of UK politics.
Update: Now Nigel Farage has jumped ship
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