One of Nigel Farage’s closest aides, who headed Ukip’s media operation for three years, has said the party has “disintegrated” and that she has joined the surge of members and supporters turning to the Conservatives.



Alexandra Phillips said Theresa May had delivered on all key elements of Ukip’s 2015 election manifesto “within a matter of months”, leaving her former party with few places to go in policy terms.

“I think ideologically the Tories are doing the Ukip dance now,” she said, pointing to policies on Brexit, immigration, grammar schools and fracking. Phillips said Farage had been “inspirational” to work with and would be remembered as “one of the most incredible politicians of our generation”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alexandra Phillips and Nigel Farage in a cafe in Doncaster in 2014. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

But in a warts and all interview, she lifted the lid on her seven years in Ukip, including three in the press office, saying the party had become more “aggressive and testosterone-fuelled” and racked with in-fighting in the latter period of his leadership.

The things that made me resolutely Ukip are the things that Theresa May is doing now Alexandra Phillips

Speaking before her former party’s annual conference at which a successor for Farage will be elected on Friday, Phillips said that:

Farage’s final months as leader were spent “trying to relive his days of the 1980s in the City”, surrounding himself with “lads” who became drinking partners

Ukip’s only MP, Douglas Carswell, and its much-praised 2015 manifesto author, Suzanne Evans, were “isolated, decapitated and demonised” after a Farage adviser claimed, without evidence, that they were involved in a coup against the leader

The party’s national executive committee had grown “significant teeth” and were now “executing” anyone linked to the old-guard, including leadership candidate Steven Woolfe, who was disqualified after submitting his application form 17 minutes late

The former Tory cabinet minister Neil Hamilton, who is now a Ukip assembly member in Wales, was a “Machiavellian Rasputin character” who was always “lurking in the shadows” when crises erupted

Ukip leadership race exposes ideological faultlines in party that has achieved its goal Read more

Phillips said she believed that a surge in membership for the Tories, with 50,000 people joining over the summer, was coming largely from Ukip deserters, admitting that she was among them.

The former adviser, whose Conservative membership card arrived this week, said: “If you look at our 2015 manifesto, Theresa May has announced it all in the first months of being prime minister – grammar schools, fracking, Brexit means Brexit, controlling immigration.

“The things that made me resolutely Ukip are the things that Theresa May is doing now.”



Phillips credited Farage for being the “charismatic driving force” behind Ukip and suggested that without him the party that would “emerge like a phoenix from the flames” would not be one that anyone recognised.

She argued that the NEC had become deeply “anti-Farage” in a misguided move.

“In a party like Ukip you get very zealous and rather bizarre individuals who want to play Game of Thrones – people unlikely to be elected and want steerage of the party,” she said.

This had led to a determination to “get rid” of Woolfe by one means or another, she claimed. Following the decision to bar him, Phillips said she believed Diane James was the “most credible” candidate for the leadership.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Steven Woolfe, who was disqualified from the leadership race after submitting his application form 17 minutes late. Photograph: Goodman/LNP/Rex/Shutterstock

Looking back at her time as head of media, Phillips said she begged Farage not to talk about banning immigrants with HIV during last year’s general election, warning that it would be a “disaster”, but had been dismissed as a “pinko” by other aides.

She said Raheem Kassam, who became Farage’s closest adviser at that time, described the intervention as “shock and awe”.

“My thing was you don’t need to shock any more. In fact, you need to bring it back in the other direction, you need to neutralise, you need to broaden your appeal if you are going to secure seats under first past the post,” she said.

But Phillips, who persuaded Farage to do “soft media” in an attempt to humanise him, said she was increasingly seen as “too light, too nice for Ukip”. She said Kassam was a “divisive” person who had shrouded the party leader.

She said that despite working alongside Carswell and Evans as well as the former director of communications, Patrick O’Flynn, in Ukip’s London office, she saw no evidence of a coup.

She described O’Flynn being pushed into “Siberia”, joking that he ended up “running a refugee centre of people maligned by Nigel and the people around him”. As tensions rose, Phillips said people were unfairly accused of leaking material, threatened with the sack, and faced nasty rumours circulating within the party.

In the end, she moved to Wales to run the party’s campaign for the assembly with the idea that she might stand herself, but said she was put off by what she found. She said she rated some individuals, such as Mark Reckless and Nathan Gill. Others were described as “nice and enthusiastic amateurs” or “downright bonkers”.

“There is one particular character – a former Conservative minister – who has the ability to always be circumstantially close to bombs going off. I can’t vouch for the fact that he causes those destructive occurrences ... but whenever there is a crisis happening, something leaked or a disaster here or there he is always lurking around in the shadows like a Machiavellian Rasputin character,” she said of Hamilton.



Hamilton hit back, claiming that Phillips was employed by Gill, who he said tried to block him as a candidate in the Welsh assembly elections, and then was upset when he was chosen as the leader of the group.

Douglas Carswell: ‘I’m having far too much fun to leave Ukip’ Read more

“Gill employs a small army of people at public expense to say disobliging things about me,” he added. “Sour grapes make poor wine. This is a personal grudge match – there is no division of ideology.”

However, Hamilton admitted there was a split in Ukip over the role of the NEC, with James wanting to get rid of it. “The only real dispute at this minute – apart from those based on personality – is that there is a faction who want to abolish the democratically elected NEC and have all power residing with the leader.”

Kassam responded to the idea that Carswell and Evans were “isolated, decapitated and demonised”, by insisting that there was a coup. “I take full credit for spotting this way in advance,” the former Ukip chief of staff said, but added that he had subsequently been willing to engage with them.

He said it was O’Flynn rather than him who came up with the HIV line, and argued that people might call him divisive but he called it “doing my job” in an office that was at times relaxed and dysfunctional.