Current Affairs

Nikki Sinclaire: Nigel Farage pushed me out of UKIP because he disagrees with ‘alternative lifestyles’

Nov 25 2013
Written by Joseph McCormick

Former UKIP MEP Nikki Sinclaire has taken aim at Nigel Farage as a “bully” and “manipulator”, who, through angry outbursts tried to push her out of the party because he disagrees with “alternative lifestyles”.

Ms Sinclaire came out publicly as transgender in last weekend’s Sun on Sunday, which also ran extracts of her new autobiography.

Earlier in the week, the MEP had warmer words for her former party when it came to tolerance.

On Tuesday, she told The Sun: “I was accepted as a lesbian in UKIP. By contrast, some of the worst homophobia I’ve seen in politics has come from the Liberal Democrats.”

The Times reports that Ms Sinclaire also accused Mr Farage of being a “mysoginist” with a “bad temper”, who would bang his fists on the table and scream at her in front of other colleagues.

She said: “He has a Stalinist approach ….. He’s purged the party of all talent ….. he’s threatened by intelligent people.”

Going on, she says he “sold the party” to businessman and donor Paul Sykes back in 2001, and that Mr Farage made her and other colleagues make a decision on whether to accept funding from Mr Sykes in a short space of time, forcing them to change the party’s constitution.

“Nigel arrived and told us Paul Sykes had an offer for us. But he said Paul had a private jet flight to catch, so he made us decide in just five minutes whether to accept,” she said.

Mr Farage “pushed it through, even though it meant changing the party’s constitution”, she added. “The UKIP conference later that year passed a motion criticising the decision and confirming the [original] constitution.”

A spokesman for Mr Farage and UKIP said: “UKIP has never changed its policy from day one on wanting to leave the EU. Paul Sykes has always been of the view that we cannot criticise the lack of democracy within the EU without offering a choice ourselves.

“Mr Farage couldn’t care two hoots what people do in their personal lives,” continuing, he said that Ms Sinclaire “refused to co-operate with her fellow MEPs and staff”.

Ms Sinclaire says she works 70-hour weeks, and has donated over £120,000 of her own money to her own eurosceptic single-issue party since 2009. Last year she was arrested on suspicion of consipiracy to defraud the European Parliament, which she denies, and remains on bail.

Ms Sinclaire successfully sued UKIP on allegations of sexual discrimination in December 2010.

Her book, Never Give Up, comes out today, priced £18.95.