UKIP tells members not to use Twitter or Facebook

As UKIP is left reeling by a series of gaffes and racist and homophobic remarks, the party has moved to block members using its logo on social media – and even advised them not to use Twitter or Facebook.

A copy of the new UKIP constitution, which has been seen by the Observer, says in “rules for online communication” that “party members shall refrain from using the UKIP logo in terms of their online postings, including avatars, unless they have express written consent to do so.”

While Steve Crowther, the party chairman, said that life was great before people felt the need to “delight the whole world with your every passing thought” and that his advice to members was, “Just don’t.”

READ MORE: Farage defends UKIP activist’s racist, homophobic comments

A spokesman for UKIP told the Observer that they had decided to make this move in part because of agents provocateurs who set up fake accounts and pose as UKIP members to tell the press “how terrible UKIP is” as well as using the UKIP logo on racist social media accounts.

Nigel Farage has been besieged by the media for some extraordinary remarks made by senior UKIP members.

Kerry Smith, a prospective parliamentary candidate was forced to resign after he was recorded as calling gay people “f***ing disgusting old poofters” and referring to a Chinese woman as a “chinky bird”.

Farage, though, sprung to his defense saying that the Essex councilor was a “rough diamond” and accused the chattering classes of London of being too politically correct and of harboring metropolitan snobbery against people using “colloquial language.”

READ MORE: Farage claims: ‘I’m the poorest man in politics’

A few months ago William Heywood, a UKIP candidate for Enfield tweeted that the comedian Lenny Henry, who had said there weren’t enough ethnic minority faces on television, should emigrate to “a black country” and doesn’t “have to live with whites.”

While Andre Lampitt, who had a prominent role in UKIP’s 2014 election broadcast, was suspended for saying Africans should “kill themselves”, attacking Islam as “evil” and calling the leader of the Labour Party Ed Milliband, whose father and mother were both immigrants, “not British."