The dramatic demise of UKIP continues unabated: another long serving, senior party loyalist has cut and run for the hills in the wake of the party’s disastrous election campaign and the fallout from it.

Pat Mountain, UKIP’s Party Director, has over the last few days been airbrushed out of all leadership positions recorded on the party website. Three weeks ago she was taken off the party’s Policy Team where she specialised in immigration, and over the last few days has also been quietly removed from the NEC list, from the list of party spokespersons (she spoke for them on Immigration and Housing) and from the leadership list where she was Party Director. She has not yet been removed as a director of UKIP Ltd, the company which controls the party, but that may now only be a matter of time.

Of all the recent departures, this is one of the most significant. Mountain has been a member of UKIP for more than a decade. She was interim leader during the 2019 general election and deputy leader for a period after that, and has been a party candidate in local council, parliamentary and European elections on numerous occasions. She was one of the group of ‘plotters’ who delivered the chairmanship to Ben ‘rogue builder’ Walker in 2020.

Her spell as leader, however, was not without its difficulties. During the 2019 election she appeared in an interview with Adam Boulton on Sky TV in which her, let us say, fragile grasp of basic facts became a topic of much derision within the party. You can watch it here.

It was this car crash interview which led to the sobriquet ‘Catherine Tate’s Nan’ being conferred upon her.

Mountain has not officially announced her resignation from any of these posts so there is no clear reason why she has gone. There are, however, unconfirmed rumours that it may be to do with her concerns over the manner in which a Reform candidate withdrew his nomination at the very last minute in the Wyreley and Penkridge constituency, leaving a clear run for UKIP candidate, Janice MacKay.