Now Ukip leader faces fight to keep job after vote of no confidence
HENRY Bolton’s future as Ukip leader was plunged into doubt last night after the party’s ruling body unanimously declared it had no confidence in him.
The meeting was called following damaging coverage of 54-year-old Mr Bolton leaving his wife and starting a relationship with model Jo Marney, 25, who was revealed to have sent racist texts about Meghan Markle.
The vote by members of Ukip’s National Executive Committee (NEC) means party members will now be given a chance to remove the former Army officer less than four months after he was elected.
Last night the party’s Brexit spokesman Gerard Batten quit.
The MEP said: ‘I have just resigned as Henry Bolton’s Brexit spokesman, and asked him, again, to resign as leader. I will continue to serve the Ukip members.’
Before the meeting, Mr Bolton toured TV studios insisting that he would not resign – but warned that a vote against him could spell the end for his party.
He told ITV’s Peston on Sunday: ‘If the NEC decides to go down the route of months of further infighting… by deciding to “no confidence” me then I think that the reality is that the party is probably over.’
Mr Bolton also said that he would continue to stay in touch with Miss Marney despite insisting he had ended their relationship and calling her comments on Prince Harry’s fiancee ‘abhorrent, unwise and offensive’. He claimed ‘subversive elements’ within Ukip were trying to undermine his leadership and accused the NEC of ‘moral judgments’.
Another leadership election could sound the death knell for the party as it would be ‘financially almost unviable’, he said.
Ukip was hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt even before the general election, at which its vote share plunged from 12.6 per cent to 1.8. Mr Bolton admitted: ‘My personal life is a bit of a mess at the moment and I need to sort that out, but I’m not letting it distract me one iota from the job of leader.’
He left third wife Tatiana, 42, and their two daughters for Miss Marney before Christmas. Yesterday ex-Ukip leader Nigel Farage denied claims he was planning a new party, but he told his LBC radio show he held talks about ‘bringing people together to get the Brexit campaign firing again on all cylinders’.
A Ukip spokesman said the decision on Mr Bolton ‘will automatically trigger an emergency general meeting of the party, to allow the membership of Ukip the democratic opportunity to decide to endorse or reject that vote of no confidence’. An emergency general meeting must be staged within 28 days.