UKIP’s anti-Islam leadership candidate Anne Marie Waters can be revealed as a strike-supporting socialist and trade unionist who played an active role in the Labour Party for a decade and described her political views as “standard left-wing”. Waters is the supposedly hard-right, Tommy Robinson-endorsed candidate in the UKIP leadership race. UKIP figures are concerned she is a Walter Mitty character, self-publicist and entryist who has taken a less than credible political journey. A 2011 video obtained by Guido shows Waters, then a prospective Labour candidate in Thurrock, talking up her socialist credentials:

“Most of what I believe would be standard left-wing… I believe in what I believe in. I believe in a strong public sector, I believe in the NHS. If there was a traditional left-wing, yes… that’s what I believe in…

I definitely endorse the right to strike and I think the Labour Party needs to stand up for the right to strike more often… I always support the trade unionists, I’m naturally inclined to support the trade unionists and I think Labour needs to reconnect with the trade unions… Generally I support strikers and certainly I support the right to strike…

The first issue and the one I am most concerned about is the NHS. I think we’ve lost sight of why we had an NHS. We’ve lost sight of why the Labour Party created the NHS and we need to return to those principles. And it’s under very sustained attack now by the Tories. They’re gonna try and do now what Thatcher couldn’t do, which was entirely privatise the NHS.”

Words which will rule her out as an option for traditional UKIP members.

Guido can reveal Waters was a Labour Party member for ten years. She was a Labour council candidate in London and ran to be Labour’s parliamentary candidate in Brighton Pavilion. In her 2013 resignation letter – deleted from the internet but obtained by Guido – Waters says she “spent endless hours canvassing, door-knocking, minute-taking (as constituency secretary) and I held several posts at branch, constituency, and borough level”.

There is of course a long tradition of left-wing nationalists, from Oswald Mosley to Marine Le Pen. Though Waters’ political journey from Milibandite to the female Tommy Robinson suggests she is not so principled. UKIP supporters have taken to calling her “Anne Waters Mitty”…