Comment Talk of Islam leaves bad taste in UKIP civil war...

face. That means any face covering.”

If you try to go through passport controls wearing a burka then you can expect to be asked to show your face.

But are we really threatened by woman wearing a burka in the local supermarket?

While Mr Etheridge defends his proposals with arguments which have nothing to do with race or religion, there does seem to be a pattern.

And he’s not alone. UKIP leadership candidate Lisa Duffy has made stoking up fear about Islam a key part of her pitch to activists.

In an interview with the Daily Express, she declared: “I will be calling for the Government to close British Islamic faith schools.

“That doesn’t mean I am picking on British Islam, but if you think about what our security services are looking at 2,000 individuals that have come from those faith schools. When does indoctrination start?” UKIP doesn’t have to be this way. Jonathan Arnott, an MEP for the North East and another leadership contender, has a different approach. He has largely avoided talking about cultural issues and instead focused on the economy.

At his campaign launch in Manchester, he set out plans to boost manufacturing, and said UKIP should support a policy of ensuring public services buy from British manufacturers whenever possible (something which he says will become possible once we leave the EU).

UKIP’s future is up in the air. It has always been an uneasy alliance of people from quite different political traditions, united by a desire to leave the EU and, for the past ten years or so, the force of personality of Nigel Farage.

Now that Mr Farage is heading into the sunset, the party is descending into civil war.

UKIP leadership hopeful Steven Woolfe, who had been the favourite to take the top job, has been excluded from the contest after he was apparently 17 minutes late submitting his nomination papers.

The party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) voted to block his candidacy by a “clear majority”, a spokesman said.

But supporters claimed he had been the victim of a coup led by UKIP’s only MP, Douglas Carswell, and Neil Hamilton, group leader in the Welsh Assembly. .And three members of the NEC immediately resigned from the committee in protest over what they called the “deliberate obstruction” of Mr Woolfe’s nomination.

MEPs Bill Etheridge, Diane James and Jonathan Arnott along with Elizabeth Jones, Councillor Lisa Duffy and Phillip Broughton will all be on the ballot paper.

The winner could end up leading a party which promotes the interests of working class people in the North and Midlands – stepping into a gap created by Labour’s own internal problems.

Or they could simply appeal to cheap populism and prejudice.

Now that Mr Farage is heading into the sunset, the party is descending into civil war