Ukip candidate aims to be leader of party

A WALES-BASED Ukip candidate who once said a homosexual donkey tried to rape his horse is standing to become party leader.

John Rees-Evans, who stood in Cardiff South and Penarth in 2015 and has a home in Penrhiwceiber, Cynon Valley, has announced his bid to succeed Nigel Farage.

On the BBC’s Daily Politics programme, he defended his comments about the “homosexual donkey”.

He said: “It was a bit of playful banter with a mischievous activist.

“I’m sorry if I offended anyone in doing that. I concede it was a mistake to be playful with an activist in a street.

“The fact is I’m not a politician. The guy was just asking me questions in the street. It was an error of judgment.”

On his website, Rees Evans says he relocated to South Wales in 2013 where he now “lives with his wife and three children in Penrhiwceiber, just 23 miles from where his great-grandfather was a vicar in Ystradynlais”.

He also describes owning a “small home in a little village in the south of France” and a property “in a very remote village in Bulgaria”.

He now runs a tourism business guiding clients to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, called Team Kilimanjaro.

Several candidates have announced they are running for Ukip leader including former deupty leader Paul Nuttall, former deputy chairman Suzanne Evans and Farage’s former chief of staff Raheem Kassam.