UKIP leader clings on amid girlfriend's racist comments

He's hardly hogged the spotlight since taking charge of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in September, but Henry Bolton embarked on a frenetic tour of Britain's major broadcasting houses on Monday morning, if for the wrong reasons.

Bolton was discussing his girlfriend and her comments on Meghan Markle, the US actor and fiancee to Prince Harry. A text message exchange between model Jo Marney and a friend, published in the Mail on Sunday, showed Marney saying that Markle's "seed" would "taint our royal family."

Marney also said "I wouldn't with a negro," and "this is Britain, not Africa," during the exchange, responding with "lol, so what?" when challenged for being racist. She has apologized but said the comments were taken out of context, promising further details at a later date.

"We've ended the romantic element of the relationship," Bolton told talk radio station LBC on Monday. He said that the scandal had severely distressed Marney, and that he wouldn't "throw her to the wolves" by breaking contact altogether.

Bolton also said he believed the real reason behind the leak was his leadership position within UKIP, calling on rivals in the party to "take me on politically" rather than "exploiting other people to do it."

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Largely anonymous, except for love life

Several UKIP officials, perhaps most prominently MEP Bill Etheridge, had called for Bolton's resignation after the Mail on Sunday published Marney's comments.

Matthew Goodwin of the University of Kent, co-author of a 2017 book on why the UK voted to leave the EU, believes that the fact the comments targeted Meghan Markle will prove particularly challenging for Bolton.

"Most voters, to be frank, won't know who he is. He's not a household name in the way of somebody like Nigel Farage, who is known much more broadly," Goodwin told DW. "But in this particular case, because the comments were also directed at soon-to-be members of the royal family, I think that will go down incredibly badly among [UKIP] members, because they're very pro-monarchy as well. So I don't think it was a helpful intervention for Bolton."

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Bolton's relationship with Marney was already in the news. The 54-year-old recently left his Russian-born wife not long after meeting Marney, although he says his marriage had been on-and-off for years.

Simon Usherwood at the University of Surrey concurs that rivals within UKIP might feel that Bolton's brief tenure has been a failure. 

"It's telling that even in the slew of articles that we've had in recent weeks about his girlfriend, we still end up with these repeated references to his ex-wife who gave birth to one of their children on a train coming into St. Pancras. That remains the most interesting fact about Henry Bolton, where his wife gave birth," Usherwood said. "He's not managed to bring the party through the failure of [previous leader] Paul Nuttall in the 2017 general election. He hasn't given it any kind of profile at all."

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UKIP's Brexit boom and (temporary?) bust

UKIP's place in British politics has always been a difficult one to quantify. Owing to Britain's first-past-the-post voting system, it has never been a real force in parliament, but it claimed nearly 4 million votes in 2015 and provided the challenge that led to the Conservatives calling a referendum on the EU.

"We are all here, ultimately, because of UKIP. We wouldn't have had the referendum and Britain wouldn't have voted for Brexit without it," Goodwin surmises.

Since 2016's referendum, however, the party has been in internal and electoral turmoil. Voters flocked back to the major two parties, the Conservatives and Labour, in 2017's snap election. Two years and a Brexit later, UKIP nosedived from 12.6 percent of the vote in 2015 to 1.8 percent.

"I think it really represents an existential problem for the party," Usherwood told DW. "For many, if not most voters, UKIP was associated with getting the UK out of the EU. For most people, they feel that that has happened — although it technically hasn't yet — and so there's not really any point in the party."

Since the referendum, UKIP has rattled through four different leaders, six if you count the caretakers. One of UKIP's elected leaders, Diane James, quit before ever being formally installed. She wrote "vi coactus" (Latin for "under duress") under her own signature on a document notifying the Electoral Commission of her becoming party leader, meaning the document couldn't be processed.

"I've lost count at how many leadership contests that party has had in the last three years," Goodwin says, albeit adding that he expects Bolton to go, sooner or later. "I think there is a view that perhaps with a more effective team, they could be doing a lot better."

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The next 18 months or so could prove crucial for UKIP. Goodwin described a growing sense on the euroskeptic fringe that their heavy hitters "vacated the battlefield" after the narrow referendum result, allowing Theresa May's government and others to push for a so-called "soft" Brexit that they oppose. May's foreign minister and leading Brexit advocate, Boris Johnson, has reportedly told friends privately that he too fears a Brexit so mild that Britain would have been better off remaining a fully-fledged EU member. 

"The future of the party all hinges on what type of Brexit deal the country concludes with the European Union. If it is effectively EU membership in another name, EEA [European Economic Area] or a 'soft soft Brexit' with a continuation of ECJ [European Court of Justice] jurisdiction and the continuation of free movement, then there will be more than enough space for a party like UKIP, because people will feel betrayed, that they did not get the type of Brexit they wanted," Goodwin believes.

Read more:Brexit deal: What we know about the EU-UK agreement 

Only making plans for Nigel?

But one man, ever divisive, causes the two researchers to disagree.

Nigel Farage has led UKIP for most of the party's existence, but he nominally quit British politics after the referendum result. Still a Member of the European Parliament for UKIP, Farage now spends much of his time on talk radio in the UK and as a contributor on Fox News as a British supporter of Donald Trump and Brexit. Usherwood wonders whether Farage, who has already ruled himself out of the running for a return to UKIP's leadership, would see value in the political post anymore. 

"We have to remember that he has already been dragged back to the post before ... For him, it worked whilst it worked but now his interests lie elsewhere," Usherwood says. "I think his close links with Donald Trump have opened up vistas of influence and renown in the US that are probably more attractive to him than what he could do in the UK." 

Goodwin, however, believes Farage — very probably Britain's most famous modern single-issue political campaigner — will always remain a political animal first and foremost. 

"He will always be tempted back. He is somebody who will never shut the door on political activism. I know that for a fact. He's not now a radio host. I still view Farage as essentially using LBC to disseminate his message. And I think the temptation of coming back, if we end up with a very soft Brexit, will be very strong."

Last week, Farage met with the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and publicly floated the idea of a second referendum on EU membership, in order to end the debate "for a generation."