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Now furious Farage kicks out Mr Bongo Bongo for branding women ‘sluts’ and hitting a journalist over the head with his UKIP brochure
- Nigel Farage condemns ‘appalling’ joke made during UKIP conference
- Bloom made remark after woman said she did not clean behind her fridge
- UKIP aides claim there is a difference between ‘slut’ and ‘slag’
- Channel 4’s Michael Crick asks why UKIP brochure has only white faces
- Bloom accuses him of being racist – and hits him with the document
- MEP is to be expelled from party as row overshadowed leader’s speech
- In 2006 interview Bloom said prostitutes ‘do it because they want to’
By Jason Groves and Matt Chorley, Mailonline Political Editor
UKIP was plunged into chaos last night as veteran MEP Godfrey Bloom was booted out of the party for calling a group of women ‘sluts’ and hitting a journalist over the head.
The UK Independence Party’s defence spokesman comprehensively derailed efforts by the leadership to show Ukip had ‘grown up’.
Party leader Nigel Farage reacted furiously last night and withdrew the party whip from Mr Bloom pending a disciplinary inquiry.
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Clobber: Mr Bloom hit Mr Crick over the head with the UKIP brochure as they argued about the fact there were no white faces on the front cover
Outburst: UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom said an event to promote women in politics ‘full of sluts’ before falling foul of Channel 4 reporter Michael Crick (left)
Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom is heard to call women ‘sluts’
Mr Farage said his former flatmate had ‘destroyed’ Ukip’s annual conference – where he told activists they could hold the balance of power at Westminster after the next election.
Mr Bloom, whose track record of outbursts includes comments about Britain giving foreign aid to ‘Bongo Bongo land’, was hosting a conference fringe meeting to promote ‘Women in Politics’.
The event was attended by a number of prominent activists, including Mr Farage’s wife Kirsten.
When one female Ukip activist joked that she did not have time to ‘clean behind the fridge’ – a reference to Mr Bloom’s claim that women should spend more time cleaning – Mr Bloom turned to his wife and said: ‘Don’t listen to this, dear.’After a second woman then made the same joke, Mr Bloom declared loudly: ‘The room is full of sluts!’
Minutes later he launched into a champagne-fuelled rant outside, which ended with him hitting Channel Four News reporter Michael Crick over the head with a copy of the Ukip conference programme.
An unrepentant Mr Bloom, who later delivered his conference speech on defence policy, said he had made a ‘purposely outrageous joke among friends which was taken as joke by women present’.
He said he had used the term in its old-fashioned sense of a slattern – a dirty or untidy woman – rather than its modern reference to promiscuity.
It comes barely a month after Mr Bloom’s complaint that UK aid money was being sent to ‘Bongo Bongo Land’.
Mobbed: A media scrum formed around Mr Bloom as the row erupetd over his comments about women at a UKIP event
Anger: The UKIP leadership are furious that Mr Bloom’s antics have distracted from the launch of its drive to win next year’s European elections
Unabashed: As the row raged outside the conference hall, Mr Bloom returned to the stage to address delegates on defence policy
‘DID YOUR MOTHER CALL YOU A SLUT?’ BLOOM ASKS BBC’S ALLEGRA
Godfrey Bloom asked BBC Newsnight’s political editor Allegra Stratton whether her mother ever called her a slut.
In an interview broadcast by the BBC, Mr Bloom asked Ms Stratton: ‘You’re untidy, you leave your kit lying around, has your mother never called you a slut?’
Ms Stratton, laughing, replied: ‘I don’t think she has. She’s called me other things but not that.’
Mr Bloom said: ‘Perhaps you’re very tidy. There was no malice, it was a joke, it was all on camera.’
UKIP called an emergency meeting last night to discuss whether to kick Mr Bloom out of the party. The leader does not have the power to withdraw the whip, but chairman Mr Crowther said the remarks had gone too far.
Mr Farage made clear he wanted Mr Bloom to be fired. He told Sky News: ‘My opinion is Godfrey has gone beyond the pale.
‘He’s a friend of mine and I’m sorry to say it but he has gone beyond the pale and I think we have no option but to remove the whip from him. Personally I have had enough of it.’
To add to the embarrassment an article emerged from 2006 in which Mr Bloom confessed to visiting brothels and said most prostitutes ‘do it because they want to’.
Challenged by reporters outside the event, Mr Bloom defended the extraordinary remark: ‘I made a joke and said “oh well you’re all sluts” and everybody laughed and all the women laughed.
‘Was there a single women in there who didn’t laugh at the joke?,’ he told Sky News.
In an extraordinary exchange, UKIP press aide Annabelle Fuller is heard saying: ‘I think people don’t understand the difference between “slut” and “slag”. Do you know what the word “slut” means?’
He then called Sky News reporter Darren McCaffrey a ‘sad little man’.
As he made his way down the street in Westminster, Mr Bloom was then accosted by Michael Crick from Channel 4 News about the fact that a party brochure featured only white faces.
He replied: ‘What a racist comment. How dare you, that’s an appalling thing to say, you’re picking people out for the colour of their skin? You disgust me.’
Ukip’s Godfrey Bloom hits Channel4 newsman at conference
He then took the brochure and hit Mr Crick over the head with it.
He later wrote on Twitter: ‘It shd not b [sic] taken out of context & misrepresented by a hostile press.
‘Made a purposely outrageous joke among friends which was taken as joke by women present.’
UKIP candidate Diane James, hailed today by the leadership as potentially the party’s first MP, condemned the ‘demeaning’ remarks and suggested Mr Bloom should resign.
Popular appeal: Attempts by Mr Farage, pictured enjoying a lunchtime pint today, to redefine the party were derailed by the row
Appalling: UKIP leader Nigel Farage condemned Mr Bloom’s remarks which he said had ‘crossed far over the line’
GODFREY BLOOM: A MASTER OF COURTING CONTROVERSY
Godfrey Bloom’s ‘sluts’ joke is not the first time his outspoken style has landed him in trouble, nor is it the most controversial.
A former economist, he was elected as an MEP in 2004 and has been making headlines ever since with his views on women, climate change and Germans.
Soon after the Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire MEP was appointed to the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality he declared that ‘no self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age’.
He added that he wanted to deal with women’s issues because: ‘I just don’t think they clean behind the fridge enough.’
On climate change he once remarked: ‘As far as I am concerned man-made global warming is nothing more than a hypothesis that hasn’t got any basis in fact.’
The bowler-hat wearing 63-year-old also admitted visiting brothels and argued that instead of being exploited most prostitutes ‘do it because they want to’.
In 2010 he was ejected from a Brussels debate after using the Nazi slogan ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer’ to insult German social democrat Martin Shulz.
In July he complained about foreign aid money being sent to ‘Bongo Bongo Land’.
The outspoken MEP suggested foreigners used aid to ‘buy Ray-Ban sunglasses’ and ‘apartments in Paris’.
Miss James, who took UKIP to second place in the Eastleigh by-election this year, told BBC News: ‘It’s demeaning both to the person who made that comment and to whoever they consider the target.
‘It’s not the language that I would use and it’s not the language that is either endorsed or used by the members of UKIP.
‘I don’t know why Godfrey made that comment; he may have an explanation. Whether that explanation could be acceptable, I don’t believe it will be.
‘And all I can do as a UKIP person is actually apologise absolutely unreservedly for that taking place and having to be reported.
‘My personal view is that he certainly ought to be considering his position.
‘What we need to do is to go through into both the European elections and also with the general election in 2015 with the strongest possible cohort of candidates and individuals that we know are going to uphold the absolutely top standards that being involved in the political world demands.’
The bizarre behaviour overshadowed the UKIP conference, where Mr Farage tried to play down the idea that the party was damaged by outbursts by senior figures.
Apparently referring to the Bongo Bongo row, Mr Farage said in his keynote speech: ‘I had the most blistering row with Godfrey Bloom in a Strasbourg restaurant the other day. He wants to fight for his beliefs and I was saying that we need to stick to the big messages.’
Mr Farage accused Mr Bloom of ‘destroying’ the conference and that could not be tolerated.
He told the conference: ‘There have been one or two incidents today. You can tell Steve was a PR man, he said it’s “conditioned” our media coverage.
‘There is no media coverage of this conference. It’s gone. It’s dead.
‘It’s all about Godfrey hitting a journalist and using an unpleasant word. It’s gone. And we can’t put up with it.’
Applause followed from delegates and Mr Farage continued: ‘We can’t have any one individual however fun or flamboyant or entertaining or amusing they are, we cannot have any one individual destroying Ukip’s national conference and that is what he’s done today.
‘I’m sad about that but we can’t tolerate this.’
But told of the ‘sluts’ joke this afternoon, Mr Farage hinted that the fresh embarrassment for the party could see Mr Bloom ousted from the party.
He told reporters: ‘It sounds appalling. It sounds highly inappropriate. Clearly his attempt at a joke sounds very, very stupid indeed.
‘There comes a point when people do cross too far over a line.’
Green party MP Caroline Lucas said: ‘Sadly, this immature, public schoolboy mentality is an unpleasant fact of politics – and UKIP seem to excel at it.
‘Bloom may well be trying to dismiss this as a joke but there’s nothing funny about sexism or about a party that tolerates it.’
The row threatened to overshadow Mr Farage’s speech to the party conference, in which he tried to laugh off addressing criticism for failing to deal strongly enough with party candidates with extreme views.
Mr Bloom was accosted by Michael Crick who asked why a party brochure, pictured, only featured white faces
The local elections in May this year were dominated by apparently racist and offensive comments posted online by some UKIP candidates.
Mr Farage conceded that being ‘the most independent-minded body of men and women’ ever seen in British politics ‘presents occasional difficulties’.
He went on: ‘We have some people with overactive Facebook accounts. And we have some who make public pronouncements that I would not always choose myself.’
He appeared to include among them both Mr Bloom and party treasurer Stuart Wheeler, who have courted controversy over public remarks.
‘I am afraid we will be subject to a whole series of smears running up to next year’s elections and the elections beyond.
‘I also know while that’s tough for individuals, in some ways it’s even tougher for the wives, husbands, children and broader family.
‘This is a rough, tough old game and I would ask you, as our party faithful, as our loyalists, to remember those up at the front leading the charge for UKIP need a lot of strong physical and moral support from you as well.’
Just hours after Mr Farage denied singing Hitler Youth songs as a child, a technical glitch gave the Ukip leader a Hitler-style moustache during a live interview on BBC Breakfast this morning.
Mr Farage was talking about immigration when a black pixel appeared on his upper lip on a big screen at Media City in Salford.
The picture was originally tweeted by BBC journalist Olly Foster but the tweet was later deleted and he apologised.
A technical glitch gave Ukip leader Nigel Farage a Hitler-style moustache during an appearance on BBC Breakfast yesterday
Defiant: In his main speech Mr Farage said he had succeeded in changing the national debate on Europe, immigration on Syria – but it risked by overshadowed by Mr Bloom’s gaffes
‘WOMEN CAN’T REVERSE A CAR AND MEN DON’T NEED TO MAKE THE BED’
Men are from Mars and women are from Venus.
Or in Godfrey Bloom’s case, men are better at reversing cars while women can find condiments in the pantry and fret about wet towels left on beds.
The bowler-hat wearing 63-year-old as gained a reputation for his outspoken views.
His musings on the differences between the sexes emerged in an article in August in which he railed against setting quotas for the number of women on the boards of FTSE 100 companies.
Mr Bloom argued that women have a ‘genetic predisposition’ to prioritise family over working hard.
‘Most women can find the mustard in the pantry quicker than a man, most men can reverse a car better than a woman,’ he said in an article.
‘Most women can find the mustard in the pantry quicker than a man, most men can reverse a car better than a woman’
‘Men and women care about different things on a micro-scale. Leaving the lavatory seat up, wet towels on the bed and the top left off the toothpaste will drive a wife mad.
‘A man simply cannot understand what the problem is. Most wives do not regard putting petrol in the car as any part of their responsibility.
‘Men cannot see the point in making the bed if you are going to get back in it tonight.’
He also boasted of being ‘just about as Alpha’ as a man can be.
‘I am not a ‘new man’, would not be caught dead at the birth of a baby and [would be] happy to punch the first man who tries to steal my beer,’ he said in the article last month.
He also lashed out at modern feminism ‘spawned in the bra burning 1970s by rather shrill, bored, middleclass women of a certain physical genre’.
He said they represented few women but are now supported by ‘the slightly effete politically correct chaps who get sand kicked in their face on the beach’.
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