Ex-Ukip candidate says she wanted to highlight pressure on women to sleep with men in powerful posts to enhance careers

Natasha Bolter, the former Ukip candidate who claims she was sexually harassed by the party’s general secretary, Roger Bird, has said that he invited her to his club on the day of her initial interview to become a parliamentary candidate.

As Bird fought back by releasing intimate text messages from the former Labour supporter, Bolter said she assumed it was “party protocol” when he invited her to continue the interview at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London.

Bolter said she had decided to speak out to highlight the pressure on women to sleep with men in powerful posts to enhance their careers.

She told BBC2 Newsnight: “I walked away from a target seat and flagged up all these issues and ruined my career and ruined my life because there’s so much pressure on women to maybe sleep with somebody they don’t want to in order to get into a job because that’s the way they feel – that’s the pressure they’re under.”

Bird, who is suspended as the Ukip general secretary as an investigation is carried out into the allegations, released 10 text messages from her and said that they had been in brief a consensual relationship this autumn.

The text messages released by Bird include one saying: “I am really missing u bird...” and another saying: “I love u bird and wish u let me look after u. Hope u feel better xx”.

Bird told Channel 4’s political editor, Michael Crick: “Natasha Bolter and I were in a consensual relationship between 18 September and 2 November, well after her admission to the list of approved candidates.

“She was keen on me and I was keen on her. I have got emails and texts to show we had a relationship and I will be presenting these to the inquiry. In any relationship there are some texts of an intimate nature.”

But in an interview with the veteran BBC journalist Tom Mangold on Newsnight, Bolter questioned whether Bird had acted in an appropriate way as the Ukip general secretary when he invited her back to Oxford and Cambridge Club on the day of her interview to become a parliamentary candidate. Bolter has since abandoned her bid to stand in South Basildon in Essex.

Bolter, a teacher, said: “He interviewed me for my PPC [prospective parliamentary candidate] exams … He interviewed me on policy. He said would I could continue interview later at a club. I thought this was party protocol for interviews. I thought it was what one does.”

But she said she felt nervous and uncomfortable. “I felt a little bit uncomfortable because it’s as though he found me attractive and he wanted to get to know me in a more intimate way as opposed to just being a good representative for the party.”

At a subsequent meeting at his office Bird asked Bolter whether she would like to go for dinner though he insisted on buying her a dress because she was not dressed smartly enough.

“I had met him at his office once and he asked me if I was hungry, would I like to go for dinner. I said yes. It was the school half-term holidays and I was wearing a jean skirt and Dr Marten boots. I don’t think I looked very politician-y that day.

“He said that I wasn’t in the right clothes to go and have a nice dinner. He bought me a dress so that I could go and have a nice dinner with him. Which in itself is nice. [But] it’s a way to buy people things because they’re in control and you’re not because they’re grateful for them supporting you. But the thing that made me most sad about the whole incident when he said: ‘Now, you look like the sort of girl that can get into a taxi’. And I think that epitomised Ukip and how they see women.”

The Newsnight interview was recorded before Bird released the texts. Bolter admitted sending friendly texts signed with an “x”. But she denied that she had ever slept with Bird. Bolter told Newsnight: “If I would have slept with him, I would of probably had an easier time than I have had in Ukip. But … I joined a party and then I was thrown to the wolves.”

In an interview conducted before details of her text exchanges had been released, she said they “were not of an intimate nature”. She said she did send texts in which she put xx at the end – saying “that is a girl thing to do but I don’t think that is particularly intimate”.

She contended Bird had asked her to sleep with him but “when I said no, nothing happened. I think he was a gentleman. I never felt scared of him I just felt pressured that if I did the right thing my career would go further and faster. If I had slept with him I would probably have had an easier time in Ukip.”

She said her decision to raise her concerns was taken even though it might ruin her career and her life.

Ukip leaders were understood to have urged her as late as Sunday night to remain in the race to become a parliamentary candidate. The former Conservative MP Neil Hamilton, once in line to be Ukip candidate for Boston and Skegness, is now in a strong position to win the party’s Basildon nomination at hustings on Wednesday evening.