Election 2017: Ukip candidate takes photo of her black husband to hustings to prove party isn't racist

Catherine Blaiklock wants to be the 'new face' of Ukip and says she '100 per cent' cannot be racist because she 'sleeps with someone of Jamaican origin'

Catherine Blaiklock holds up a photograph of her husband (Great Yarmouth Mercury)

A Ukip candidate took a photograph of her black husband to a hustings, in an apparent bid to prove the party is not racist.

Catherine Blaiklock, who is standing on behalf of the far-right, Eurosceptic party in Great Yarmouth, has said she wants to be the “new face” of Ukip.

Addressing a local sixth form college, Ms Blaiklock said her current husband is Jamaican, and her ex-husband is from Nepal – using the framed photograph as evidence.

The event on Wednesday was the guest house owner’s first hustings since being selected to stand for the party earlier this month.

Ms Blaiklock, who has two children from her first marriage and runs a charity called Nepal in Need, said she wanted to help the party shed its negative image.

Ukip has repeatedly been accused of racism, including by David Cameron who said in 2006 that the party was full of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists".

During the Brexit campaign last summer, the party — then led by Nigel Farage — was widely condemned for a billboard poster showing a queue of refugees below the slogan “Breaking Point”.

The poster was reported to the police for inciting racial hatred and breaching UK race laws.

Ms Blaiklock told VICE magazine it is also unfair to label Brexit voters racist.

“There are millions of people who voted out and are not racist, including myself – I sleep with somebody who is black, who is, you know, of Jamaican origin!” she said, adding that she is “100 per cent not racist”.

She denied that Ukip mobilises the issue of race to win votes, pointing out that the party is the only one “ that vets against people who've been in the BNP”.

She said the parties anti-immigration agenda was not to do with race — “Well, I think we would have an issue if we decided to take 3 million South African whites as well,“ she argued.

Ukip's Great Yarmouth candidate Catherine Blaiklock poses (George Ryan/ Great Yarmouth Mercury)

Despite the lengths she went to to avoid being labelled racist, Ms Blaiklock told VICE she had “never. Never. Never. Absolutely never,” actually been accused of racism.

She added: “I just want to say it's important to shatter stereotypes. I know numerous people who voted Leave. We have Jewish people, all sorts of races, who want to be out.”

Ukip lost seats to the Tories in last months local elections and polling indicates the party will lose even more seats in the general election this June, with pundits describing a "collapse" of the party as a political force.