Ukip leader Henry Bolton is facing increasing pressure to resign after his girlfriend’s apparently racist remarks about Meghan Markle.
Jo Marney, Bolton’s partner, was forced to apologise in the Mail on Sunday after the paper released messages she had sent about Prince Harry‘s fiancee.
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The 25-year-old had said Markle would ‘taint’ the Royal Family with ‘her seed’ and pave the way for a ‘black king’.
She had also said she would never have sex with ‘a negro’ because she thinks they are ‘ugly’.
Despite party members urging 54-year-old Bolton to step aside ‘quickly’ and ‘quietly’, he has not responded – save for a retweet of a message telling him not to resign.
Marney claimed her texts were taken out of context when they were published by the Mail.
Bill Etheridge, West Midlands MEP, told the BBC that Bolton should step aside ‘quickly’, calling him a ‘naive political lightweight’.
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He said that while Bolton’s personal life was distracting from policy, there were other complaints – including a rise in membership fees – and said that the party’s leader does not have the ‘experience or the political nous or the correct advice to deal with the issue that he faces’.
‘He must go, he must go quickly, he must go as quietly as possible,’ Etheridge said.
Ben Walker, a Ukip activist and former leadership candidate, also called on Bolton to resign before destroying the party’s ‘political family’.
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The party chairman Paul Oakden told BBC’s Sunday Politics that Bolton now had some ‘difficult decisions’ to make.
‘He intends on making those decisions today, and I’m sure whatever he does will be in the best interests of the party,’ he said.
If Bolton were to quit, the party would need to look for its fifth leader in just 18 months.
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