Former UKIP Deputy Chair, manifesto writer, and leadership candidate Suzanne Evans has become the latest big name to abandon the rapidly disintegrating party, declaring that “there is no hope left.” This follows another big name kipper, Patrick O’Flynn resigning from the party last week. Pressure will be now mounting on Nigel Farage, who told Talk Radio this morning that he is “thinking long and hard” about whether to stay in the party…

Read Suzanne’s statement in full:

“Enough is enough. Having been increasingly alarmed in recent months by the perverse direction in which Gerard Batten is taking UKIP – with no mandate from members – I have reached the end of the road.

I was hoping, yesterday, that sense would prevail; that UKIP’s National Executive Committee would call for a ‘no confidence’ vote in Batten, so the party could be prevented from taking a devastatingly wrong turn. But if even those elected to represent ordinary members won’t protect UKIP from a leader who appears hell bent on destroying it from within, then there is no hope left.

As the NEC’s abject failure of responsibility follows hot on the heels of a similar failure by UKIP’s remaining MEPs to force the issue, I feel I have no option but to join the thousands of other good, decent former UKIP members in walking out of the door in disgust at the radical change in UKIP’s direction.

The NEC and UKIP MEPs might be willing to turn a blind eye to the obvious attempts by Gerard and Tommy Robinson to orchestrate a ‘Momentum-style’ takeover of UKIP, but I am not. Having planned to simply let my membership lapse in March, when it is due for renewal, I have today cancelled it instead.

I joined UKIP because it was a Brexit party, and because I wanted a referendum on our EU membership. I would never have joined UKIP as it stands today, obsessed as it is with becoming a successor to the BNP and the EDL, and putting an increasingly hostile and vicious focus on attacking the Muslim community en masse.

I am very proud of my work with UKIP in the past, and all I have previously helped the party achieve. I have no regrets on that front whatsoever. However, the time has most definitely come to completely sever my connection to UKIP because, quite simply, it is no longer the party I joined, and it is not now one I want any part of.

I will continue to campaign in whatever capacity I can for the UK to make a clean break from the EU.”

She will be explaining her decision in further to Iain Dale at 19:15 this evening on LBC…