Ukip is back in the news after accepting Katie Hopkins as a member

I've charted its slide into the far right, and how it caused the party to be obliterated in the polls https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ukip-gerard-batten-tommy-robinson-b1786768.html

In 2018, anyone at pro-Brexit or 'Free Tommy' protests would have seen placards, hats and signs with the logo 'Make Britain Great Again'

The group, organised through a Facebook page, was run by Ukip members. I interviewed its founder, who left and sought deradicalisation support

In the same year, Ukip leader Gerard Batten took on Tommy Robinson as an adviser and welcomed Paul Joseph Watson, Mark Meechan (Count Dankula) and Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad) as members

The aim was to use their online reach to bypass the 'MSM' and get new members

But Batten was also increasingly focusing on Islam and taking extremist positions, with an “interim manifesto” presented at Ukip’s 2018 conference including proposals to create Muslim-only prisons and repeal hate crime laws

Ukip's youth wing went further, inviting ...

...Martin Sellner, of the Generation Identity white nationalist group, to its conference in 2017 and 2018

On his way to the second conference, he was prevented from entering the UK. He was later investigated over donations from the Christchurch terrorist https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/brenton-tarrant-christchurch-donations-generation-identity-b1768056.html

If the plan was to recruit new members and improve Ukip's electoral success, it backfired spectacularly

Waves of senior defections started and eventually Nigel Farage quit and launched the Brexit Party

In subsequent European, local and general elections, Ukip was obliterated

I phoned Batten to put the allegations to him but he refused to speak to me or share an email address, then sent out a series of tweets and Parler posts accusing me of lying (he had no idea what I would write) and calling me a 'sewer rat' and other insults

I also put the questions to Ukip. The press email was answered by a man who had been involved in inviting Sellner to the Young Independence conference and been the subject of complaints to Ukip's leadership in 2018

He asked for evidence and then failed to respond to my reply