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LONDON: An anti-Islam campaigner in the running to lead the hard-right UKIP in Britain has split the party best known for its anti-immigration policies.
Anne Marie Waters, who founded “Sharia Watch” pressure group, is one of 11 candidates in the race to run the UK Independence Party — better known as UKIP.
Despite being banned from standing as a candidate for the party during the June 2017 general election after calling Islam “evil” and proposing a ban on the burka, she has been allowed to stand in the party’s current leadership race.
That has angered some of the party’s senior figures including Mike Hookem, a UKIP MEP who resigned as the party’s deputy whip last week in protest over the backing of Waters by chief whip Stuart Agnew.
In a statement, Hookem said: “I strongly disagree with the views Ms Waters and Mr. Agnew promote and I would like to put as much distance between me and them as possible.”
Others have also threatened to quit while former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said the party would be finished if it became an anti-Islam movement.
UKIP rode the wave of populism that swept through Britain in the run up to the June 2015 EU membership referendum.
It campaigned hard for Britain to leave the bloc on an anti-immigration platform that secured it 12.6 percent of the vote that year, making it the country’s third most popular party.
But its share of the vote had shrunk to just 1.8 percent when Britain again went to the polls in June 2017.
But having achieved its goal of getting Britain out of the EU, some of its senior figures warns it risks being taken over by anti-Islam campaigners such as Waters.
Voting papers for the UKIP leadership race are due to be sent out this month with a new leader for the party to be announced at its annual conference in Torquay next month.