Another UKIP Member of the European Parliament has resigned from the party, saying it has 'significantly shifted its position on religious and cultural issues' and condemning the 'infighting, backstabbing, over-inflated ego and shameless self-promotion' he said characterises its operations.
Jonathan Arnott is a Christian who is MEP for the North East of England and has been a party member for 17 years. He will stay on as an indepedent MEP.
UKIP has been hit with a fresh crisis after the revelation of racist texts sent by the girlfriend of its leader Henry Bolton, leading to speculation about its survival.
Arnott said in his resignation letter: 'Over the last week it has become abundantly clear that the current leader is not the right person for the job, but likewise that those jockeying for position and hoping to take his job would be no better.'
In an interview with TWR, he said he feared the party would not survive and that it was a 'very upsetting' situation.
He also said he would feel more free to speak out as an independent MEP on certain issues.
'Certainly as a Christian I do believe that means there are things which I can now say. Because a political party's job is not to promote a particular religion,' he said. 'It is not to push a particular agenda that is specifically related to religious belief, so there are issues on which I've kept quite in the past because it's not the role of a member of a political party to bind their political party to something on which I might now speak out on.'
However, he said that while 'the kind of work I do is likely to change', 'fundamentally the job of representing your constituency is the same, whatever your party label is – or none, in this case'.
During his career as an MEP, Arnott has raised questions about the EU's approach to religious liberty. He has also called for 'reasonable accommodation' to be made in questions of freedom of conscience around equalities legislation in the provision of goods and services.
The full interview with Jonathan Arnott will be broadcast on TWR at 8am on Saturday.
