Nigel Farage Quits Ukip Over Tommy Robinson Appointment
4 December 2018, 18:17 | Updated: 4 December 2018, 19:09
Nigel Farage has announced on LBC that he has quit Ukip following the party's appointment of Tommy Robinson.
The former Ukip leader made the dramatic announcement on his LBC show on Tuesday night.
He was critical of the party's current leader Gerard Batten, who recently appointed Tommy Robinson as an advisor.
"I have worked tirelessly for Ukip," Nigel said.
“I made sure we talked about tough issues, but we absolutely excluded anybody who’d ever been a member of the BNP, the EDL.
"We wanted to make sure that when the abuse was thrown at us it couldn’t be possibly proved true.
“I’m afraid that under this leader Gerard Batten, a lot has changed.
“He seems to be pretty obsessed with the issue of Islam, not just islamic extremism, but Islam and Ukip wasn’t founded to be a party based on fighting a religious crusade.
“And also obsessed with this figure called Tommy Robinson.”
Nigel said Ukip was being turned into a party of “street activism”, an outcome he described as “catastrophic”.
“I don’t recognise the party I once I helped found and fought for for all of those years,” he continued.
“So with very great reluctance I have now resigned my membership of Ukip.
“I’ve cancelled my standing order at the bank, I’m no longer a member of Ukip.”
I hear that Nigel Farage has resigned from UKIP. Nigel & I were founder members of UKIP in 1993. I have always given him full credit for his work in UKIP bringing about and winning the Referendum. However, I feel that he left UKIP in spirit after the Referendum.
— Gerard Batten MEP (@GerardBattenMEP) December 4, 2018
Mr Batten later responded on Twitter to the news Nigel had resigned.
"I have always given him full credit for his work in UKIP bringing about and winning the Referendum," he wrote.
"However, I feel that he left UKIP in spirit after the Referendum."
