A FORMER chairman of Ukip in Scotland who won a legal battle to have a 100-year membership ban on him lifted is to stand as a candidate for the Scottish Tories in May's local council elections.
Paul Henke, was accused by UKIP of “bringing the party into disrepute” and “deliberately sabotaging” an election campaign, after he raised concerns to the Sunday Herald about the party's Scottish MEP David Coburn, before his election.
However, despite overturning the Ukip ban, Henke is now a member of the Scottish Tories and is to contest the Bannockburn ward on Stirling council for the party in May.
The SNP said Henke's decision to join the Tories showed the two parties are becoming increasingly inseparable and interchangeable.
An SNP Source: "It's been clear since the EU referendum that the Tories have become born-again Brexiteers – but now we see that they are actively accepting former high-ranking Ukip officials as candidates.
"Ruth Davidson's party are becoming completely indistinguishable from Ukip."
Last night Henke told the Sunday Herald that he had "always been a Tory at heart", but had gone to Ukip "on the basis" of its opposition to the EU.
He said he had quit Ukip after winning the court case against the party.
Ukip imposed the century-long suspension on Henke and several other party members after they signed a letter protesting about the appointment of David Coburn as the party’s Scottish candidate in the 2014 European elections.
The letter accused Coburn of making false statements and when it was picked up by the Sunday Herald Henke told them: “I expect the complaint to be investigated properly. I believe Ukip to be an up-front party run by honourable people. We should have honourable people as candidates.”
However, the Central London County Court ordered the ban to be lifted at the end of last month as Her Honour Judge Taylor said the ban amounted to an expulsion of Henke – something that was beyond the party chairman’s powers to do.
Judge Taylor ordered UKIP to pay most of Henke’s costs, with total costs of the case to the party suggested as being around £30,000.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel