Katie Hopkins ABANDONS Med Trip

Last week, the adoring Twitter followers of pro-am motormouth Katie Hopkins were promised that she would be joining a group of like-minded people cruising the Mediterranean Sea, looking for migrants they could send back somewhere. Then it all started going wrong: Mail Online pulled her latest column, the group she was to join turned out to be a bunch of Nazis and white supremacists, and the ship got arrested in Suez.

Viewers may want to look away now

While Hatey Katie was sunning herself on the quayside, nobody who mattered would talk to her, and then two of the group with whom she had allied herself had their Patreon pages removed because their activities were judged “likely to cause loss of life”. And now comes the news that her trip has turned out to be an almighty cop-out: she won’t be setting sail with anyone, and has set off on her return trip to the UK.

You read that right: all that Ms Hopkins did while in the Sicilian port city of Catania was to pose in front of a few ships, Tweet out a few radar images showing search and rescue boats at work in the Med between Italy and Libya, and preview her upcoming Mail Online “exclusive” about it all. The ship she claimed she would join, the C-Star, won’t be in Catania for several days, if it ever arrives at all.

Exclusive my arse - because ...

And she won’t be there to meet it, because she flew out yesterday. Yes, you read that right, too. So after she whined about Owen Jones, Tweeting “This is the gentleman who campaigned successfully to remove me from @LBC” (there were more influential voices urging LBC to bin her), and claiming “EXCLUSIVE My full report from the Med all next week @MailOnline From sea, to port, Sicily to Rome. Tracking people, profit & power”, she let slip what she was really up to. And it wasn’t about joining the C-Star.

... she flew out yesterday

What it was about was returning to Britain instead. And not by ship: “Not wishing to be alarmist, but watching an entire football team board your flight doesn't bode well. Karma? Is that you calling” she Tweeted. Her flight. Yes, she was boarding a plane. To leave Italy. And return to the UK. No sea-sickness for Hatey Katie.

There was, after all, no chance of her ever spending very much time on board the C-Star - because Ms Hopkins’ diary is already booked for the end of this month. By next weekend, she has to be in Los Angeles, where she is being given another opportunity to shoot her mouth off, which she then admitted: “Looking forward to joining The Pussy Panel @Politicon in LA. 29 & 30 July”. Migrant bashing takes second place to self-promotion.

You think Hatey Katie is not just about self-promotion? She’s already plugging yet another of her avoidable excursions: “Join me in conversation with the brilliant Decca @GrouchoClubSoho in October”. No solidarity with the far-right in the Med. No real in-depth reporting of the migrant crisis. Just pushing the Hopkins brand, such as it is, in order to score More And Bigger Paycheques For Herself Personally Now.

Katie Hopkins has taken her fans for mugs. But at least she’s left herself with an outside chance of settling all those legal bills.