Share

Ukip leadership frontrunner Steven Woolfe excluded from race

Mr Farage has attacked NEC members as “among the lowest grade of people I have ever met” and has always been at odds with Mr Carswell and Mr Hamilton.

Advertisement

Steven Woolfe has hit out at Ukip’s ruling committee after it voted to exclude him from the party’s leadership contest.

Mr Woolfe, who is the party’s migration spokesman, has impressed the party membership since he became an MEP for the North West in 2014.

“He, as the leader of UKIP in Wales, led the party to victories for seven Welsh assembly members in May”.

His bid to takeover the party is now in the hands of officials, who met on Tuesday to discuss the eligibility of all candidates.

“An NEC led panel sat yesterday afternoon to determine the eligibility of those that submitted nomination papers to stand to be UKIP’s new Party Leader”, a party statement said.

Mr Woolfe had blamed computer problems for missing the deadline on Sunday.

UKIP MEP Diane James is now considered to be the frontrunner, after being listed among the candidates.

It also emerged that he failed to declare a drink-driving conviction when he stood for a police and crime commissioner post in 2012.

Mr Farage, who also backs Mr Woolfe, has been sniping from the sidelines, branding NEC members “total amateurs who come to London once a month with sandwiches in their rucksacks, to attend NEC meetings that normally last seven hours”.

Six candidates are competing to lead Britain’s right-wing U.K. Independence Party, which was a key force in the country’s vote to leave the European Union.

“His membership of the party was not in question”, the statement added.

Advertisement

Mr Woolfe is standing alongside Huntingdonshire councillor Lisa Duffy and MEPs Bill Etheridge and Jonathan Arnott.

Favorite to lead Britain's UKIP excluded by late paperwork