UKIP founder says party has “gone completely fruitcake”

The founder of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), professor Alan Sked, claims the party has been “captured” by radicals and is “anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual and racist”.

In an interview with the The Sunday Telegraph, the London School of Economics (LSE) international history professor who founded the anti-Europe alliance party in 1993, expressed his “great regret” the party has “gone completely fruitcake”.

Describing UKIP as a “stick to beat David Cameron with”, the founding professor voiced his dismay at UKIP leader Nigel Farage and company’s removal of the clause: “A non-sectarian, non-racist body with no prejudices against foreigners or lawful minorities of any kind” from the UKIP manifesto.

Farage, who proclaimed UKIP to be a “protest vote” against the Conservative party, replied to The Sunday Telegraph that he had not spoken to Sked in 15 years and was “not particularly interested” in Sked’s comments, denying racism and immigration prejudice.

“We have actually ensured that extremists from neither the Right nor Left can join our party,” Farage clarified, claiming the sectarian clause was removed with a new party constitution.

Earlier this month, UKIP won 150 seats in council elections, or 26% of the vote. They gained 2,000 supporters this month, and are predicted to surpass 30,000 supporters soon.

It was also reported earlier this week a Labour representative from Grimsby has now become the first Labour defector to the UKIP party.

Former Cameron rival for Conservative leadership, Dr Liam Fox, told The Huffington Post last week that UKIP could take the Liberal Democrats place in British politics as a major party.

In 2006, David Cameron revealed he thinks the UKIP party is made up of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” on LBC Radio.

During the interview, professor Sked, now 65, also expressed a desire to start a “euro-sceptic party on the centre Left of politics to put a bit of pressure on Labour and the Liberal Democrats”.

Lucy Woods