Steven Woolfe is facing pressure to drop his Ukip leadership bid after an altercation with a fellow party MEP left the frontrunner in hospital.

Senior party figures suggested Woolfe’s apparent willingness to resort to violence rendered him unfit for leadership.



The North West England MEP, who is recovering in hospital in Strasbourg, has extended the “hand of friendship” to Mike Hookem, the other MEP involved in the confrontation in the European parliament on Thursday.



Hookem dismissed the incident as a “handbags at dawn, girl-on-girl” scuffle, but he insisted he had not thrown any punches and that Woolfe had been the aggressor.



The European parliament president, Martin Schultz, announced that he was launching an investigation into the pair’s conduct, which could result in them being suspended from voting and having their expenses cut.



The Ukip MEP Jonathan Arnott said it was “obvious to anybody” that Woolfe could no longer be a candidate.

“This really portrays Ukip in an appalling light,” he told BBC2’s Daily Politics programme. “The people who have worked hard for this party, year in, year out, they expect better of their MEPs than what has been seen over the last 24 hours.”

Lisa Duffy, who was runnerup in last month’s leadership election, said party members were embarrassed by the incident.



“Do we want a leader who will get himself involved in an altercation, or do we want a leader who is going to be rational and reflect and deal with things in an appropriate manner?” she asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday. “Violence or any kind of offering to go outside is not the way to deal with problems.”

Hookem said reports that he punched Woolfe were incorrect. “I never touched him, never hit him, never punched him, never slapped him or anything else I’ve been accused of doing,” he told the Press Association.

The MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire said the flashpoint came when Woolfe said he had been kept off the ballot paper for the recent leadership election.

“I said: ‘Sorry Steven, I disagree with that, you never got your paperwork in. You had 20 days to get your paperwork in, you failed to do it. It’s as simple as that. You’re at fault, nobody else, not the party, not the NEC, you’re at fault.’ He then took umbrage at that.”

Hookem said Woolfe told him: “Well if that’s the tone of this meeting, maybe me and you should take it outside the room, mano-a-mano.”



He said Woolfe then picked up his jacket and left the room. “So I went out of the room into this small anteroom where he came at me. And what occurred was a tussle. Nothing happened. It was literally seconds because the other MEPs followed us in there.

“The door opened. I backed off. Steven fell through the door and I went back to sit back down again.”



Hookem said Woolfe jumped up and said he only wanted to talk to him. “I was backed up because my colleague Paddy O’Flynn said: ‘No, sorry Steven, you were the one that instigated this, you were the one that stood up and said let’s take this outside mano-a-mano’.



“He was the one that did it, it wasn’t me. It was him that said this. I have to say there were no punches thrown from him or me. I never hit him, I never slapped him, I never pushed him.

“So what occurred later on in that day had nothing whatsoever to do with me.”



His account is at odds with that of Woolfe, who told the Daily Mail that Hookem “came at me and landed a blow” and that he had then fallen back and hit the door frame.

