What the papers say: Is the party finally over for Ukip?

Ukip has defied predictions about its death before. Yet even the party’s most ardent supporters would find it hard not to feel gloomy about recent events and the party’s downward spiral. Ukip’s leader Henry Bolton clings on, despite losing a vote of no confidence and suffering a raft of resignations among his top team. ‘Is the party finally over for Ukip?’, asks the Daily Telegraph. The paper says that Bolton’s refusal to step down looks like an act of ‘forlorn defiance’, and it seems likely that the party’s leader has lost the trust of members as a result of his relationship with a racist model. It’s worth remembering that Ukip ‘has never really been a political party in the conventional sense’, argues the paper, which says the group is more like a ‘single-issue movement’. It goes without saying that the Brexit vote was, at least partly, brought about by ‘Nigel Farage and Ukip delivering voters who no longer trusted the two major parties’.