Former Ukip chairman in court charged with sexual offences

The former chairman of Ukip in Scotland has made his first public appearance at court to face a string of sexual offences.

Arthur Thackeray, 55, faces 12 charges spanning eight years between October 2007 and December 2015, involving 12 different women.

All of the charges are said to have taken place at his home in Glasgow’s east end, at 1 Colme Street, Edinburgh and “elsewhere”.

Ukip Scotland leader and MEP David Coburn’s office is at the same address in the capital.

The case was called at Glas- 0 Arthur Thackeray denied a total of 12 charges in court gow Sheriff Court yesterday where Thackeray denied the charges.

His lawyer Jackie White withdrew from acting due to problems with legal aid and the court appointed anoth- er lawyer for Thackeray. The case was continued until a later date for the court to get an update on the state of preparation by the new defence lawyer.

One of the charges Thackeray faces is an alleged breach of the peace by making sexual remarks over the phone to a woman and her 14-year-old daughter and telling them he was watching a “sexually explicit video”.

Another is behaving in a threatening or abusive manner “likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm” by repeatedly contacting a woman and “causing” her to believe he was outside her home and watching her.