Ukip MEP quits to join Farage’s new Brexit Party
West Midlands MEP Jill Seymour said Ukip leader Gerard Batten has taken the party to the ‘extreme right’.
A Ukip MEP has announced she is quitting the party to join Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party.
West Midlands MEP Jill Seymour said that under current leader Gerard Batten, Ukip had moved to “the extreme right of politics”.
“I am not walking away from the party’s original core principles, but the present party’s direction means it has walked away from me, and its original membership,” she said.
“I shall now be sitting as an officially designated Brexit Party MEP for the remainder of my mandate in the European Parliament.”
Ms Seymour, who resigned last year as the party’s transport spokesman, added: “No one person should ever be bigger than a political party, but sadly I believe that Mr Batten will be instrumental in its demise.”
Her move follows the announcement last week that the sister of leading Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, Annunziata, had left the Conservative Party to stand as a Brexit Party candidate in next month’s elections to the European Parliament.
