UKIP Harbours Racists No Shock Horror

The Mail on Sunday has been doing what it has done so often in the past: digging up yet another series of embarrassing social media interactions in order to score an inexpensive front page splash. This time, the victim - and a thoroughly deserved one at that - is Jo Marney, who is famous only because she became the alleged mistress of new UKIP leader Henry Bolton over Christmas in another lame publicity stunt.

The headline leaves little else for readers to discover: “VILE RACIST ATTACK ON MEGHAN BY MISTRESS OF UKIP CHIEF … Leader’s lover suspended from the party after MoS exposes sick Royal slurs”. Quite apart from that one reading as if it was cobbled up from a do-it-yourself Northcliffe House outrage kit, the message is clear - UKIP has been harbouring plain old racist bigotry. And no-one should be surprised.

What the MoS has unearthed includes “Alluding to ethnic minorities in general, Ms Marney writes that they are ‘pushing their way to the top slowly slowly. Next will be a Muslim PM. And a black king’ … The ex-model - who has remained in touch with the friend she texted since starting her relationship with Mr Bolton - tells him that she would not have sex ‘with a negro’”. Islamophobia. Racism. And there was more. Rather a lot more.

“During the exchange, Ms Marney - who is from Kent and describes herself as an actor and music journalist - also complains that there is ‘an immigration problem’, saying: ‘This is Britain. Not Africa’ … After her friend accuses her of being racist, she writes: ‘Lol so what... Not wanting other races and cultures to invade your own culture doesn’t mean I hate their race. Just means I don’t want their cultures invading mine’”.

So someone who would have been comfortable with the segregation of the American South, or even the South African Apartheid of Hendrik Verwoerd. And not a good look when the Kippers meet later this week to pass judgment on Bolton’s stewardship of his party. But no-one should have been surprised, for two very good reasons.

One, Ms Marney has already shown on her Twitter feed that Bolton should, shall we say, have trodden rather more carefully: she is a fan of Enoch Powell, has sneered long and loud at the victims of now-disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, suggested that the less well-off should not have children, and claimed that Britain does not have a housing problem, but a “population problem”.

And two, on a more general Kipper note, the stench of racism has never been far away, especially during the EU referendum campaign when Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, who is now saying he won’t return to save the party if Bolton is binned (although Nige may, not for the first time, be speaking with forked tongue), caused such revulsion with his “Breaking Point” poster. UKIP has tried to finesse the race card and failed miserably.

Now the Kippers are not only in the papers for all the wrong reasons, but are also as close to being All Washed Up as makes no difference. All that the MoS splash will do for them is make the voting public laugh a little bit louder - as well as wonder how many more bigots the party is harbouring.

UKIP is now finished as a serious political party. Just rejoice at that news.