Katie Hopkins - All Washed Up

Another day, another attempt to garner clickbait by pro-am motormouth Katie Hopkins, who has journeyed north to Doncaster to join the UKIP faithful paying homage to their Dear Leader Nigel “Thirsty” Farage at what is optimistically called the party’s annual conference. The only question about her presence there will be whether it is she, or UKIP, that is the most desperate of the other’s company.

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And the clickbait generating snipes at the world were as distasteful as ever: after more than 700 pilgrims died during a crush at the Hajj, she Tweeted “717 pilgrims killed in stampede during religious pilgrimage where they throw stones at pillars. Target practise for Sharia I guess”. Her “otherness” paranoia had earlier taken the Sun’s entirely fictitious front page claim that a million migrants were heading for the UK to whine a bit more.

“You bleeding hearts desperate to do good because of 1 photo, you're accountable for this mess”. And today, just to show how desperate she is for attention, she told that the photo of dead toddler Aylan Kurdi, washed up on a holiday beach in Turkey, had been “staged”. But, by now, Ms Hopkins’ unpleasantness was out of favour at her most prestigious berth - the Sun. And now she is leaving the paper.

She’s putting a hopeful gloss on her departure: “Thanks for all the kind words about my new role @MailOnline I look back with fondness & forwards with huge excitement … Katie Hopkins is about to get a much, much bigger audience” were typical. But, as the Guardian has told, the idea that Ms Hopkins actually resigned from the Sun is not quite true. Her style did not meet with the approval of the paper’s new editor.

Tony Gallagher “was not thought to be a fan of Hopkins, had not met her and believed her to be ‘toxic’ to the newspaper. One source says the Sun was ‘letting her contract lapse’ and there was no intention to keep Hopkins on as a columnist. Hopkins contract with the Sun was up for renewal at the end of the month”. That means, whisper it quietly, that Katie Hopkins is too unpleasant even for the Sun.

She’s going to Mail Online. Where she is not going is the print version of the Daily Mail or Mail On Sunday. Martin Clarke has taken her on for one reason, and one alone: she generates clicks. He needs clicks to get advertisers to stump up more money. But this kind of appointment has a limited shelf life, as Glenn Beck discovered when he was deemed too much even for Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse).

So it’s appropriate that she’s fetched up with Mr Thirsty to tell the declining UKIP membership “Farage going great guns. 4 million votes, 1 MP. But a relentless leader still very much at the helm”. No, Katie, he’s ranting to fewer and fewer people, and soon you’ll be ranting to ever-decreasing numbers at Mail Online, until Martin Clarke tires of advertisers’ complaints and pulls the plug on you.

Katie Hopkins, you’re all washed up. Don’t let the Sun’s exit door hit you on the way out.