Katie Hopkins joins UKIP in time for the party’s leadership contest

Far-right provocateur Katie Hopkins has joined UKIP in time for the party’s leadership contest.

The former Apprentice contestant said she had joined to “stand” for the people of Britain, in a video posted to the party’s Facebook page.

It comes after tax consultant Freddy Vaccha — who once listed Nazi Germany as a hobby on his CV — was removed as UKIP leader after just three months.

Hopkins, 45, claimed that she had repeatedly been asked if and when she would enter politics.

“People always ask me when am I going to get into politics, when am I going to do something smarter than just gob off on social media”, she said.

“But I do see that the time for just being on social media and just having opinions is wearing thin and is probably time for somebody like myself, who is at the pointy end of the spear most of the time, to make more of a formalised stand.

“And I am tired of seeing my fellow countrymen knocked down for going for a walk or trying to have a cup of tea. And I am not happy about people being imprisoned in their own homes.

“And I will certainly no longer tolerate the fact that so many people can’t say what they think, even stopping themselves saying stuff when they think it because they know they will be found to be wrong or someone will try to take something for us.”

Hopkins, a former Sun and MailOnline columnist, was permanently banned from Twitter in June last year for violating the platform’s hateful conduct policy.

Since then she had embraced Parler, the self-described “free speech” social media site popular with Donald Trump supporters and users banned from mainstream platforms. The site went offline this week after Amazon pulled its web hosting services, citing examples of violent content in the wake of the Capitol Hill riot.

Hopkins appears to be posting videos to a small Facebook page currently, which has just over 23,000 followers.