‘It’s very simple, RESIGN’ Jacob Rees-Mogg attacks Henry Bolton for dividing Ukip
JACOB Rees-Mogg took aim on former Ukip leader Henry Bolton for refusing to resign when his party's NEC had a vote of no confidence against his leadership over his affair with Jo Marney, which led to him being sacked from the party yesterday.
‘You could have resigned’ Rees-Mogg GRILLS sacked Ukip leader
Speaking on LBC, the Tory MP condemned Mr Bolton's failure to resign from his position as party leader following a scandal around his affair with model Jo Marney.
She was later found to have sent racist and derogatory messages about Meghan Markle when her engagement to Prince Harry was announced.
Mr Bolton was removed from his position on Saturday after he lost a vote of no confidence at his party's EGM.
The former Ukip leader tried to justify the defeat saying many of his supporters could not attend the meeting and were not given the chance to back him in the vote, adding he would make a return to politics.
Jacob Rees-Mogg lambasted his defence calling on the former leader to take responsibility for his own actions.
He said: "Aren’t you evading your personal responsibility by trying to blame it on to others?
“Ukip is in a mess in part because of your personal life and information that came into the public domain of an unpleasant kind.
“Shouldn’t you stand up and take it on the chin and say effectively ‘mea culpa’?”
In an attempt to justify his position, Mr Bolton replied: "The NEC had a vote of no confidence in me, the constitutional process is that that goes on to an EGM, it went to an EGM, so that the members who elected me could decide what they wanted to do, and that’s what I’ve done.
“So, yes, I could have resigned earlier but you know what? I actually believed that there is a greater job to be done here.
UKIP members SACK party leader Henry Bolton
Shouldn’t you stand up and take it on the chin and say effectively ‘mea culpa’?
“And that is that there is a party to be unifying and putting out the message on the European Union.”
Once again, the Tory MP dismantled Mr Bolton's loose defence and attacked him for having caused division in his own party.
Mr Rees-Mogg said: "May I say, you clearly weren’t doing that job of unifying, you were clearly dividing.
“And because the tweets or the social media comment was racist in nature, it was allowing all the anti-Ukip stereotypes to come to the fore and that was doing an enormous harm to your party for which you had responsibility.
“And then you say ‘Well, there’s a detailed process’ but there’s also a very simple process that you stand up and say ‘I resign’.
“You could have done that and that might help solve the problem for the party sooner.”
Mr Bolton had been under pressure to quit since it emerged his 25-year-old model partner sent racist messages about Prince Harry’s mixed-race fiancee Meghan Markle.
Before the vote was announced, Mr Bolton revealed he had received a good luck message on his phone from his controversial ex.