Raheem Kassam and David Kurten pull out of leadership race

Raheem Kassam has pulled out of the leadership race today after failing to secure adequate funding from supporters to pay for anything other than an online campaign.

David Kurten also pulled out of the leadership race yesterday, saying that he would be happy to work with any of the candidates still in the running.

This leaves just four candidates: Suzanne Evans, Paul Nuttall MEP, John Rees-Evans and Peter Whittle AM.

What is interesting is how different these final four candidates are. Two of the four are full time politicians, one is a woman, one is Welsh, one is from a working class council estate and another is gay. Both BME candidates pulled out over the last 48 hours but the diversity of the 7 candidates who officially declared their intention to stand torpedoes the media lie that UKIP is a party of racist, sexist, homophobic old Tories in cheap blazers. There has been more diversity in UKIP's leadership contest than all the other mainstream parties combined.