16 times Nigel Farage tried and failed to stop Ukip being blokey

Nigel Farage has admitted that Ukip's "blokeish" image has discouraged women from supporting the party.

Here are all the times he and his cohorts tried their best to dispel that image.

1

This is what kicked it all off.

2

Even during that recent stunt, Farage was unable resist making a sexist comment.

"I am not going to pretend to reach out to female voters or voters of all different denominations. We're one country, we're one people and this party is making huge progress," he said.

"The problem with female voters and Ukip is that, over the last 5 to 10 years, at times, on a very bad day, we've looked a bit blokeish, a bit like a rugby club on a day out and I'm probably the most guilty person of all ... The pub and everything else. It's true, it was a very male dominated party in every aspect.”

When asked whether he would change the party's image, he added: “What do you want me to do? Go sell flowers?”

3

Godfrey Bloom was eventually kicked out of the party for saying stuff like this:

4

Getting the name of your own deputy chairman wrong.

5

Ukip deputy Paul Nuttal said it all:

When you think of Nigel Farage, you think of a pint, you think of a bloke's bloke.

6

But we should never forget this.

7

This video says a lot.

8

Farage said this to Belgian magazine Up Front in 2010 when asked about women's football.

"Here's the bigger question. Do we think, chaps, when we're there in the front line, when the balloon goes up, with fixed bayonets, when the whistle's about to blow to go over the top, do we actually want to be there with women beside us? Do we? What an extraordinarily bizarre idea! I certainly don't think so.

"But maybe it's because I've got so many women pregnant over the years that I have a different view. I find it very difficult to think that we could stand up and run over the top together, into the machine guns or whatever. Men and women are different - thank God!"

9

Speaking in January Farage said that City workers who took time off to have kids weren't as valuable to employers.

“In many cases, women make different choices in life to the ones that men make simply for biological reasons," he said.

“If a woman with a client base has a child and takes two or three years off work, she is worth far less to the employer when she comes back than when she goes away because her client base cannot be stuck rigidly to her."

When asked if the situation was fair, he responded: "I can't change biology."

10

In February last year Marta Andreasen, Ukip's only female MEP, said Farage was a "Stalinist dictator" and "anti-women".

Farage said the criticism was "laughable nonsense".

11

Farage said this to the Daily Telegraph in 2010: "Lap dancing? Don’t have the time these days, but I used to go to them. Like it or not, they are a fact of life. You are talking about normal behaviour there. Everyone does it."

12

Godfrey Bloom gave a speech seemingly while under the influence of alcohol. He later claimed he was feeling the effects of medication for a broken collarbone.

13

When this happened during the debate with Nick Clegg.

14

When a former donor told Channel 4 News there was no such thing as marital rape.

If you make love on Friday and make love Sunday, you can’t say Saturday is rape.

15

Ukip treasurer Stuart Wheeler said this about women in the boardroom:

“I would just like to challenge the idea that it is necessary to have a lot of women or a particular number on a board.

"Business is very, very competitive and you should take the performance of women in another competitive area, which is sport where [men] have no strength advantage.

“Chess, bridge, poker – women come absolutely nowhere. I think that just has to be borne in mind.”

16

In November 2013, Ukip MEP Stuart Agnew told his European Parliament colleagues: "I've never had a baby, but I understand if you do have a baby it can change your life - it changes your ambitions. So, the route is there. Those females who really want to get to the top do so."

The upshot?

A poll in Middleton and Heywood, where Labour is defending the seat left vacant by Jim Dobbin, Ukip ahead of Labour 41-39 among men but 21 per cent among women.

More: The 12 ways in which Ukip is the gift that keeps on giving