Raheem Kassam said the flat he shared with Nigel Farage during the election campagin ‘looked like a Damien Hirst exhibition’ because it was so unkempt.
Raheem Kassam said the flat he shared with Nigel Farage during the election campagin ‘looked like a Damien Hirst exhibition’ because it was so unkempt. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
Rowena Mason Political correspondent
Wednesday 10 June 2015 20.29 BST
Last modified on Thursday 11 June 2015 00.01 BST
Nigel Farage’s election campaign was hampered by a party which is in a mess and full of “rag-tag, unprofessional, embarrassing people”, according his closest adviser in the election campaign.
Ukip insider Raheem Kassam: ‘We had to lock HQ doors because some people were too embarrassing to be seen’
Raheem Kassam, who left Ukip during a bout of bitter infighting after the election, warned that the party was in a “mess because there’s no discipline” and came near to being completely broke after throwing everything at the general election campaign. Ukip is now in the process of moving from its Mayfair office and downsizing to a much smaller location in Westminster.
The Farage adviser said he looked back on many people within Ukip as “a bunch of rag-tag, unprofessional, embarrassing people who let Nigel down at every juncture.”
He told the Guardian: “Someone needs to go in there with a big stick. It needs root-and-branch reform. The constitution is outdated, the national executive is outdated. The funding streams are all wrong. The website is all wrong. It needs a massive, massive overhaul.”
Kassam said he believed Farage would like to lead the campaign for those who want to take Britain out of the EU and that his former boss would be the best person to do so. The 28-year-old spent eight months in Farage’s inner circle as his senior adviser.
Kassam left the party after the general election when some of his critics in Ukip branded him a “poisonous” influence on Farage, dragging the party too far to the right. He disputed this and claimed his detractors were upset by his closeness to Farage during the campaign and were trying to stop the Ukip leader playing too big a role in the EU referendum.
He recalled his time working at Farage’s side, which included going for steam-room trips together in an effort to stop the Ukip leader sweating on television. The leader and his key advisers regularly consumed what Ukippers call PFLs (“proper fucking lunches”) and shared with him a flat in Ramsgate, Kent that “looked like a Damien Hirst exhibition” because it was so unkempt.
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In his remarks, Kassam also:
• Predicted Douglas Carswell, the party’s only MP, would only last another six months in Ukip, as he is not accepting any public funds and is therefore no longer useful.
• Described Ukip’s headquarters as “like a fucking playground”, where he and another aide would show journalists around and “have to lock certain doors because the people behind those doors were too embarrassing to be seen”.
• Spoke of his feelings of regret at having gone to work for Ukip in the first place, which he says led to him being made the “fall guy” in the post-election feud between Farage’s camp and figures such as Carswell, Patrick O’Flynn and Suzanne Evans who wanted the party to more towards the centre.
• Branded one party activist who he declined to name as a “definite racist” and “disgraceful”, although he said that he encountered far less prejudice in Ukip than when he had in the Conservative party.
Kassam, who now works for rightwing website Breitbart, has recently signed up Farage as a columnist and said he is still in regular contact with his former boss.
A Ukip spokesman said: “Raheem Kassam has not worked for Ukip since the election and for much of the intervening period has been out of the country. As such, given the changes that have happened since that time, he is more than a little out of touch with the reality.
“Mr Farage has made clear time and time again that he sees himself as ‘a’, not ‘the’, leader of the out campaign, and is calling for a broad, inclusive campaign which is cross-party, and no party.
“On the question of party finances, of course the party’s coffers are a little bare: we have just fought an election campaign; this is the same for all parties. Many members of staff were working on ‘election contracts’, including Mr Kassam, and were not expected to, nor expected themselves to, continue working for the party after the election. This in turn means that our we no longer need the same size office. So much is normal.
“Mr Kassam is not privy to the financial situation of the party now, nor was he before. As to the other comments, he is entitled to his own views, of course, but they are not views shared by the party.”
Last week, Farage appeared to imply that he would like to lead the “out” campaign durign the EU referendum, In an interview with the Daily Telegraph newspaper, he said: “We are going to take the lead, we are going to get cracking. But we will at all times invite others to come along and share the platform with us …
“The no campaign needs to get itself moving. All this nonsense from very snobby Tories that we should not dominate the campaign and I should go on holiday for six months – forget it!
“We are going to be at the forefront of this – we will open our arms and be all embracing and welcome everybody.”
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