Hangleton Rangers burn Nigel Farage shirts

A youth football club in Brighton have sacked their coach and confiscated a training kit because it was sponsored by Nigel Farage.

Farage made a personal donation of £150 to the club to pay for a training kit for Hangleton Rangers and the coach had Farage's name put on the kit as the sponsor. But the committee, according to the club secretary Kevin Aughey, has decided that it's a political donation.

Would this be Brother Kevin Aughney who is on the committee of the Brighthelmstone Lodge? The committee that also includes Councillor Ron Maskell (Conservative, Lewes)?

Brighton is, of course, in the same euroregion that Nigel Farage represents and the part of the country that provides the highest support for UKIP. In the last EU elections, UKIP took 19.2% of the vote and returned 4 MEPs. The Conservatives currently have 4 MEPs but early indications show that UKIP is on track to gain an even higher number of votes in the impending EU election than the last one and a lot of those will be at the expense of the Conservatives.

The Conservatives run Brighton & Hove City Council with a minority cabinet and the borough's 3 MPs are Labour. With 12 teams and 200 members the last thing the Conservatives will want is Farage's name on Hangleton Rangers' shirts.

According to Kevin Aughey, the donation from Farage is "political" and the shirts will be burned. Farage said:

This was a personal donation. I was glad to help. Being an MEP is being part of the local community and if I can help that community in some way then I always try to. Nobody from the club has had the courtesy to contact me to ask whether it was a personal donation or a political one. If they had then none of this would have happened. The real losers here are the kids themselves.