Patrick O’Flynn issues humiliating apology and resigns as economics spokesman

Patrick O’Flynn has apologised for starting last week’s Ukip wars. I understand that O’Flynn met with Farage in Strasbourg this morning — the first time the pair had sat down since his comments in the Times last week. In a slightly bizarre turn of events, the party has released the following statement from O’Flynn:

‘I would like to express to colleagues my sincere regret at going public with my frustrations about the turn of events following polling day. And more than that, I would like to apologise directly to Nigel for the phrase ‘snarling, thin-skinned and aggressive’. This was a fragment of a wider passage about perceptions and is not what I think of him. Nonetheless, I should have known better than anyone what use would be made of phrases that were both unfair and unkind.’

O’Flynn has also announced he is standing down as Ukip’s economics spokesman. Now, he has no formal position in the party, aside from being one of its 23 MEPs:

‘I am proud of what we achieved in the general election and am only sorry to have succumbed, as Roger (Helmer) put it with such impressive understatement, to public remarks that were ‘unhelpful’.