UKIP’S Scottish leader has resigned over the party’s lurch to the far right and its association with Tommy Robinson.
MEP David Coburn took to social media on Friday morning to announce that an infiltration of “English nationalists” had forced him out.
He promised to serve the rest of his term as an independent.
The SNP's Alyn Smith accused him of being a "sad chancer lingering on like the last unwelcome guest at the office night out."
Ex-UKIP leader Paul Nuttall has also quit the party over its connection to Robinson, the founder of the racist English Defence League.
Nuttall, who sits in the European Parliament as an MEP for North West England, claimed Ukip is "being taken in a direction which I believe is harmful to Brexit".
Last month Ukip’s leader, Gerard Batten, appointed Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, as an adviser on rape gangs and prison reform.
In his statement, Coburn said Ukip had been “infiltrated by people with an alternative agenda, which is not the one I stood when I was elected and sadly does not represent the values for which Ukip once stood”.
He added: “I did not run on an anti-Islam platform. Unfortunately this seems to be the direction Ukip is taking – obsessing about this issue to the exclusion of all else at a time when we might lose the Brexit we fought so hard for.”
Coburn said that though he had defended Robinson after the ex-convict was jailed for contempt of court, that didn’t mean he agreed with his politics.
“I spoke up for the rights of Tommy Robinson, on principle, when he was imprisoned in what I viewed as a potential injustice; as I would do for any individual, of any political persuasion. However this does not mean I support his politics or that Ukip should adopt them.”
Two weeks ago, Coburn told this paper he wouldn’t be quitting, and denied that being part of Ukip meant he was associated with Robinson.
“I’m not associated with anybody,” he told The National.
He added: “The Queen’s associated with the British government, but doesn’t mean to say she voted for Mrs May, did she?”
In his statement, Nuttall, who sits in the European Parliament as an MEP for North West England, claimed UKIP was "being taken in a direction which I believe is harmful to Brexit".
He added: "Putting Tommy Robinson front and centre, whilst Brexit is in the process of being betrayed is, in my view, a catastrophic error."
Nuttall led Ukip between November 2016 and June 2017, but his time in charge was a disaster for the party, dominated by a row over false claims on his website.
He said he had played football for Tranmere Rovers, that he had a PhD and that he’d lost close friends in the Hillsborough disaster. None of those claims were accurate.
Under his leadership Ukip won less than 600,000 votes at last year's general election.
Coburn and Nuttall follow Nigel Farage and a huge swathe of UKIP MEPs in quitting the party since the Brexit vote.
SNP MEP Alyn Smith said he was glad Coburn had "embraced independence."
He added: “Without the shackles of the legendary UKIP iron party discipline he’ll be a force of nature. Like an unpleasant wind.
“UKIP now has no elected politicians in Scotland, just this sad chancer lingering on like the last unwelcome guest at the office night out.
“He is a no mark blawhard in Brussels, and for him to claim now that he is leaving the busted flush that he has made UKIP over islamaphobia is as absurd as he is. From the man who compared one of our ministers to a terrorist as if it were some sort of joke and just last week didn’t care about Tommy Robinson’s appointment I think we can put his latest tantrum in context.”
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