Now Ukip ‘is on brink of bankruptcy’

UKIP was plunged into a fresh crisis last night as it was warned it faces ‘imminent bankruptcy’.

Senior party figures demanded radical cost-cutting to keep Ukip afloat, including laying off staff and giving notice on its tenancies for office buildings.

The financial crisis comes as the party faces the prospect of losing its leader.

The National Executive Committee will hold a vote of confidence in Henry Bolton, 54, on Sunday, after he left his third wife for a model less than half his age, who it emerged had posted a slew of racist messages online.

Ukip’s most recent accounts show it was £380,630 in debt even before last year’s general election.

The party’s MEPs Stuart Agnew and Bill Etheridge are among figures who have drawn up a ‘proposal for transformation’. In order ‘to save the party’, the group said Ukip’s NEC must begin immediate cost-savings.

They called for the party to ‘give immediate notice’ to its chairman, national agent and spokesman whose wages they claimed make up 45 per cent of Ukip’s salary bill.

Other suggestions included ‘giving notice on all rented property’ and ‘suspending the practice of paying expenses to any senior personnel’.

They added: ‘[The party must] stop anything going out by “snail-mail” and stop all paper magazines funded by Ukip’.