UKIP leader Nigel Farage said Wednesday that he believes that a party candidate photographed performing an apparent Nazi salute was actually “imitating a pot plant”.
Alex Wood, 22, a candidate in Somerset, was the latest candidate from the anti-immigration United Kingdom Independence Party to come under fire ahead of Thursday’s local elections.
The photo appeared in the Daily Mirror newspaper and is now under investigation by police, while Wood has been suspended from UKIP, best known for wanting to take Britain out of the European Union.
“I must confess, I nearly had kittens when I first saw this (photo),” Farage wrote in a Huffington Post blogpost on Wednesday.
“I’ve looked carefully into this and spoken to Alex, and I believe him when he says that he was angrily trying to take a camera off his girlfriend who was annoyingly taking pictures of him in the pub imitating a pot plant.
“These things happen — I should know!”
Farage has also said he is thinking of reinstating Wood.
An Opinium poll for the Observer on April 20 gave UKIP 17 percent of the vote, with Labour on 35 percent, the Conservatives on 29 percent and the Liberal Democrats trailing in fourth at 8 percent.
Conservative minister Ken Clarke at the weekend called the party “a collection of clowns” and said some of its supporters were racist, but Prime Minister David Cameron has avoided criticising them despite fears they are eating into the Tories’ support base.
The party has won some hearts with its opposition to gay marriage, wind farms and the smoking ban under the leadership of the colourful Farage.
But it has also had to deal with a series of allegations against candidates.
Anna-Marie Crampton, a candidate in East Sussex, was suspended last month after apparently posting anti-Semitic comments on a conspiracy theory website, including a claim that World War II was “engineered” by Zionists.
She has said her account was hacked.
Emails leaked to the Observer newspaper this week included one of its European parliamentarians, Godfrey Bloom, complaining that forging policy for the party was like “herding cats”.
Farage wrote Wednesday: “Whilst it is true that a handful of UKIP candidates have caused us embarrassment, others have been quite unfairly traduced.”
He added: “In front of the assembled media today on the final day of campaigning before voters go to the polls across the country, I am going to show just what UKIP can achieve in local government.”
UKIP 'Nazi salute' candidate was 'imitating pot plant'
